To complete the catalogue of German operatic composers who are followers of Wagner would be to make it inclusive of every name and work that has attained any place in the operatic repertoire of modern times.
In no less degree is his despotic hand felt in the realm of absolute music. It was through the concert stage that Wagner won much of his first recognition and it followed naturally that symphonic music must soon have felt the influence of his genius. Anton Bruckner was an early convert and, as a confessed disciple, attempted to demonstrate in his symphonies how the dramatic warmth of Wagner’s style could be confined within the symphony’s restricting line; a step which opened up to those who did not follow Brahms and the classic romanticists a path which has since been well trodden.
Outside of Germany the spread of Wagner’s works and the progress of his influence forms an interesting chapter in history. We have seen Wagner resident in Paris at several periods of his life; on the occasion of his first two French sojourns his acquaintance was largely with the older men, such as Berlioz, Halévy, Auber, and others, but during his final stay in Paris, in 1861, Wagner came into contact with some of the younger generation, Saint-Saëns and Gounod among others. It was perhaps natural in a France, which still looked to Germany for its musical education, that these two youthful and enthusiastic composers should champion the cause of Wagner and become imbued with his influence, an influence which showed itself strongly in their subsequent work. While neither of these men made any attempt at remodelling the operatic form after Wagner’s ideas, their music soon showed his influence, though denied by them as it was on several occasions. More open in his discipleship of Wagner and a too close imitator of his methods was Ernest Reyer, whose Sigurd comes from the same source as Wagner’s ‘Ring’—the Nibelungen myths. Bizet is often unjustly accused of Wagnerian tendencies; though he was undoubtedly an earnest student and admirer of Wagner’s works and has, in Carmen, made some slight use of a leading motive system, his music, in its strongly national flavor, has remained peculiarly free from Wagner’s influence. Massenet, on the other hand, with his less vital style, has in several instances succumbed to Wagner’s influence, and in Esclarmonde there occurs a motive so like one of the Meistersinger motives that on the production of the work Massenet was called by a critic ‘Mlle. Wagner.’ Stronger still becomes the Wagner vein in French music as we come down to our own day. Charpentier’s ‘Louise,’ despite its distinctive color and feeling, leans very heavily on Wagner in its harmonic and orchestral treatment. As a reactionary influence against this encroaching tide of Wagnerism was the quiet rise of the new nationalistic French school which César Franck was evolving through his sober post-Beethoven classicism. That Franck himself was an admirer of Wagner we learn from Vincent d’Indy,[115] who tells us that it was the habit of his master to place himself in the mood for composition by starting his working hours in playing with great enthusiasm the prelude of Die Meistersinger. César Franck numbered among his pupils a great many of those who to-day form the circle of representative French composers. These writers all show the forming hand of their master and faithfully follow in his efforts to preserve a noble, national art. There has, however, crept into many of their pages the haunting and unmistakable voice of the Bayreuth master. Vincent d’Indy, one of the early champions of Wagner and one who, with the two conductors, Lamoureux and Colonne, did much to win a place for Wagner’s music in both opera house and concert room of Paris, is strongly Wagnerian in many of his moments and the failure of his dramatic work is generally attributed to his over-zealous following of Wagner. The strongest check to Wagnerism in France and elsewhere is the new France that asserts itself in the voice of him whom many claim to be the first original thinker in music since Wagner—Claude Debussy. The founder of French impressionism, himself at one time an ardent Wagnerite, tells us that his awakening appreciation of the charm of Russian music turned him from following in Wagner’s step. Whatever may have been its source the distinctive and insinuatingly contagious style of Debussy has undoubtedly been the first potent influence toward a reaction against Wagnerism.
A brief word may be added as to the Wagner influence as we find it in the other European nations. Of conspicuous names those of Grieg and Tschaikowsky fall easily into our list of Wagner followers. Undeniably national and individual as both have been, each had his Wagner enthusiasm. Into the works of the former there crept so much of Wagner that Hanslick wittily called him ‘Wagner in sealskins,’ while Tschaikowsky, continually sounding his anti-Wagnerian sentiments, is at times an unconscious imitator. From England there has come in recent years in the work of one whom Strauss called ‘the first English progressive,’ Edward Elgar, a voice which in its most eloquent moments echoes that of Wagner. But perhaps the most significant proof of the far-reaching influence of Wagner’s art is the readiness with which it was welcomed by Italy. As early as 1869 Wagner found his first Italian champion in Boïto and to him was due the early production of Wagner’s works at Bologna. Wagner’s influence on Italian composers has been largely in the respect of dramatic reform rather than actual musical expression; the accusations of Wagnerism which greeted the appearance of Verdi’s Aïda were as groundless as the same cry against Carmen. In Aïda Verdi forsook the superficial form of opera text that had been that of his earlier works and adopted a form more sincerely dramatic. This was, of course, under the direct influence of Wagner’s reform as was the more serious vein of the musical setting to this and Verdi’s two last operas, ‘Othello’ and ‘Falstaff’; but in musical idiom Verdi remained distinctively free from Wagner’s influence.
With this brief survey in mind the deduction as to the lasting value of Wagner’s theories and practices may be easily drawn. Wagner, the composer, has set his indelible mark upon the dramatic music of his age and that of a succeeding age, and, becoming a classic, he remains the inevitable model of modern musical thought. Wagner as dramatist constitutes a somewhat less forceful influence. Despite the inestimable value of his dramatic reform and its widespread influence on operatic art Wagner’s music dramas must remain the unique work of their author and so peculiarly the product of his universal genius that general imitation of them is at once prohibited by the fact that the world will not soon again see a man thus generously endowed.
Added proof of the enormous interest which has attached itself to Wagner and his works is found in the large and constantly increasing mass of Wagner literature, more voluminous than that heretofore devoted to any musician. The ten volumes which comprise Wagner’s own collected writings,[116] contain much of vital interest, as well as a mass of unimportant items. Besides the poems of the operas, beginning with Rienzi, we find all of those essays to which reference has been already made, in which he advances his æsthetic and philosophic principles. There is besides these a quantity of exceedingly interesting autobiographical and reminiscent articles and many valuable pages of hints as to the interpretation of his own and of other works. Of greater interest to the general reader is the two-volume autobiography.[117] This work covers Wagner’s life from childhood to the year 1864, the year in which he met King Ludwig. Dictated to his wife and left in trust to her for publication at a stated time after his death, the book was eagerly awaited and attracted wide attention on its appearance in 1911. In its intense subjectivity, it gives us a vivid and intimate picture of Wagner’s artistic life, and in its narration of external events several episodes of his life, which had before been matters of more or less mystery, are explained. The publication of this autobiography was the signal for a last and faint raising of the voice of detraction against Wagner’s character in its egotistical isolation. The unrelenting attitude of aggressiveness that he adopted was only the natural attendant upon his genius and its forceful expression. To him who reads aright this record of Wagner’s life must come the realization that self-protection often forced upon him these external attitudes of a selfish nature, and that his supreme confidence in his own power to accomplish his great ideals warranted him in overcoming in any way all obstacles which retarded the accomplishment.
B. L.
FOOTNOTES:
[107] ‘My Life,’ Vol. I.