It was only to be expected that the titanic personality of Wagner should drag a number of smaller men after it, both in his own day and later, by the sheer force of attraction of a great body for small ones. In one of his essays Matthew Arnold characterizes the test of the quality of a critic as the power 'to ascertain the master current in the literature of an epoch, and to distinguish this from all the minor currents.' This sensitiveness to master currents, however, that is so essential to criticism, is generally a source of danger to the secondary creative minds; it is apt to tempt them to follow blindly in the wake of the master spirit, instead of trying to find salvation on a road of their own. In the third quarter of the nineteenth century it was indubitably true that the master current in music was that set going by Wagner; but it was equally true that any other mariner who should venture upon that stream was pretty certain to be swamped by Wagner's backwash. So it has proved: with the sole exception of Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel, no operatic work of the late nineteenth century that openly claimed kinship with Wagner has exhibited any staying power, while the more durable success has been reserved for works like Cornelius' Barbier von Bagdad and Götz's Der Widerspenstigen Zähmung, that frankly recognized the impossibility of any smaller man than Wagner continuing Wagner's work.
As was inevitable, the more self-conscious of the post-Wagnerians fastened for imitation upon what they thought to be the essential Wagner, but that a later day can see was the inessential. To them Wagner was the re-creator of the world of the German saga. Posterity has learned that with Wagner, as with all great creators, the matter is of much less account than his way of dealing with the matter. It is not the body of religious and cosmological beliefs underlying the Greek drama that makes the Greek dramatists what they are to us to-day. Their very conception of the governance of the universe is a thing that we find it hard to enter into even by an effort of the historical imagination; nevertheless these men are more vital to us than many of the problem-play writers of our own epoch, simply because the emotional stuff in which they deal is of the eternal kind, and they have dealt with it along lines that are independent of the mere thought of their own age. Similarly, what is most vital for us in Wagner now is not his myths, his problems of the will, his conception of love, of redemption, of renunciation, or the verse forms into which he threw his ideas, but the depth of his passion, the truth of his portraiture, the beauty and eloquence of his speech. The real Wagner, in truth, was the Wagner that no one could hope to imitate. But the generation that grew up in his mighty shadow imagined that all it had to do was to re-exploit the mere externalities of his work. Like him, it would delve into German myths or German folk-lore for its subjects; like him, it would adopt an alliterative mode of poetic diction; like him, it would treat the less intense moments of drama in a quasi-recitative that was supposed to be an intensification of the intervals and accents of ordinary speech. But all these things in themselves were merely the clothes without the man; and not one of Wagner's immediate successors showed himself big enough to wear his mantle. Many of these works written in a conspicuously Wagnerian spirit have still considerable interest for the student of musical history—the Kunihild (1848), for example, of Cyrill Kistler (1848-1907)—but not enough vitality to preserve for them a permanent place in the theatre repertory. (The same composer's Baldur's Tod, written in the 'eighties, was not performed till 1905 in Düsseldorf.) The big Homeric tetralogy of August Bungert, Odysseus Heimkehr (1896), Kirke (1898), Nausikaa (1900-01), and Odysseus Tod (1903), is an attempt to do for the Greek myths what Wagner did for the Teutonic. (The composer is said to be engaged upon a second tetralogy of the same order, bearing the general title of 'Ilias.') How seriously one section of the German musical public took these colossal plans was shown by the proposal to erect a 'Festspielhaus' on the Rhine that should be to Bungert music-drama what Bayreuth is to the Wagnerian. After a fair amount of success in the years immediately following their production, however, Bungert's operas have fallen out of the repertory. His talent is indeed lyrical rather than dramatic. Bungert was born in Mülheim (Ruhr) in 1846 and studied at the Cologne Conservatory and in Paris. He became musical director in Kreuznach (1869) and has since lived chiefly in Karlsruhe and Berlin. Besides the 'tetralogy' he wrote a comic opera, Die Studenten von Salamanka (1884), and some symphonic and chamber works. His songs (including Carmen Sylva's 'Songs of a Queen') have probably more permanent value than the rest of his work.
The opera has in fact tempted many of the German lyricists to try to exceed their powers. Hans Sommer (born 1837), who has produced a number of songs of fine feeling and perspicuous workmanship, attempted a Wagnerian flight in his opera Loreley (1891), in which the treatment is a little too heavy for the subject. Like so many of his contemporaries, he frequently suffers for the sins of his librettists. Felix Draeseke (b. 1835) has hovered uncertainly between Schumannesque and Wagnerian ideals; his most successful opera is Herrat (1892).[35] Adalbert von Goldschmidt (1848-1906) aimed, as others of his kind did, at continuing the Wagner tradition not only in the musical but in the poetic line. He was his own librettist in the opera Helianthus (1884); but in the music of both this and the later opera Gaea (1889) the Wagnerian influence is obvious. Carl Goldmark (1830-1915) brought the best musical qualities of a mind that was eclectic both by heredity and environment to bear upon the very successful operas Die Königin von Saba (1875), Merlin (1886), and Das Heimchen am Herd (1896), founded on Dickens's 'Cricket on the Hearth.'
Though a native of Hungary (Keszthely, 1830), Goldmark received a thoroughly German training in Vienna, where he studied the violin with Jansa. He entered the conservatory in 1847 and, since that institution was closed the following year, he continued his studies by himself. In 1865 he aroused attention with his overture Sakuntala, which is still in the orchestral répertoire. Happily guided by an artistic instinct, he hit upon a vein which his talent especially fitted him to exploit, namely, the painting of vivid oriental color. His first opera, 'The Queen of Sheba,' produced in Vienna in 1875, following the same tendency with equal success, has preserved its popularity till to-day. The chronological order of his other operas is as follows:
Merlin (Vienna, 1886, and revised for Frankfort, 1904); 'The Cricket on the Hearth' (1896); 'The Prisoner of War' (1899); Götz von Berlichingen (1902); and 'A Winter's Tale' (1908). His symphonic works include, besides the Sakuntala overture, an orchestral suite (symphony) 'The Rustic Wedding,' a symphony in E-flat, the overtures 'Penthesilea,' 'In Spring,' 'Prometheus Bound,' 'Sappho,' and 'In Italy'; a symphonic poem 'Zrínyi' (1903), two violin concertos, a piano quintet, a string quartet, a suite for piano and violin, pianoforte and choral works.
An apt criticism of Goldmark's style is given by Eugen Schmitz in the revision of Naumann's Musikgeschichte: 'In any case, we know of no second composer of the present time who can paint the exoticism and fata morgana of the Orient and the tropics, the sultriness and the effects of a climate that arouses devouring passions, as well as the peculiarity and special nature of the inhabitants, in such characteristic and glowing tone-colors as Goldmark has succeeded in doing. Herein, however, lies not only his strength but also his weakness; for he is exclusively a musical colorist, a colorist à la Makart, who sacrifices drawing and perspective for the sake of color. Which means, translated into musical terms: a composer whose melodic invention and thematic development does not stand in a proportionate relationship to the intoxicating magic of tone-color combinations that he employs. Moreover, his coloring is already beginning to fade beside the corresponding achievements of the most modern composers of to-day.'
A number of minor talents have from time to time obtained a momentary or a local success, without in the end doing anything to sustain the hope that something really vital might be expected of them; of works of this order we may mention the Urvasi (1886), Der Evangelimann (1894), Don Quixote (1898), and Kuhreigen (1911) of Wilhelm Kienzl (1857);[36] Die Versunkene Glocke and Faust of Heinrich Zöllner (1854); the Ingwelde (1894), Der Pfeifertag (1899), and Moloch (1906) of Max Schillings (born 1868); the Sakuntala (1884), Malawika (1886), Genesius (1893), and Orestes[37] (1902) of Felix Weingartner (born 1863). In these and some dozen or two of other modern Germans, composition is an act of the will rather than of the imagination. The generous eclecticism and superficial effectiveness of the Tiefland (1903) of Eugen d'Albert (born 1864) have won for it exceptional popularity.
The classification of Schillings as a 'minor talent' would probably not meet with the approval of many critics and musicians in Germany, where his influence is considerable. Schillings is one of the ramparts of the progressive musical citadel of Munich, the centre from which the Reger, Pfitzner and Thuille strands radiate. If aristocracy and nobility are the outstanding characteristics of his highly individual muse, a corresponding exclusiveness, coldness and artificiality accompany them. His perfection is that of the marble, finely chiselled, hard and polished. His music is a personal expression, but his personality is one that never experienced the depths of human suffering. Schillings was born in the Rhineland (Düren) in 1868 and finished his studies in Munich. There he became 'royal professor' in 1903 and later he went to Stuttgart as general musical director in connection with the court theatre. Besides his operas he wrote the symphonic prologue 'Œdipus' (1900), music for the 'Orestes' of Æschylus (1900) and for Goethe's 'Faust' (Part I). Of non-dramatic works there are two 'fantasies,' Meergruss and Seemorgen; Ein Zwiegespräch for small orchestra, solo violin and solo 'cello, a hymn-rhapsody, Dem Verklärten (after Schiller) for mixed chorus, baritone and orchestra (op. 21, 1905), Glockenlieder for tenor and orchestra, some chamber music and about forty songs. Especially successful are his three 'melodramatic' works, i.e. music to accompany recitation, of which the setting of Wildenbruch's Hexenlied is best known.
Weingartner and d'Albert, too, are considerable figures in contemporary German music, though their records as executive artists may outlive their reputations as composers, the first being a brilliant and authoritative conductor, the latter a pianist of extraordinary calibre. Besides the operas mentioned above Weingartner has written the symphonic poems 'King Lear' and 'The Regions of the Blest,' two symphonies, three string quartets and a piano sextet (op. 20), songs and piano pieces. He has also distinguished himself as a critic and author of valuable books of a practical and æsthetic nature. D'Albert's evolution from pianist to composer was accomplished in the usual manner, by way of the piano concerto. He wrote two of them (op. 2 and 12), then a 'cello concerto (op. 20), and promptly embarked upon a symphonic career with two overtures ('Esther' and 'Hyperion') and the symphony in F. Then came chamber music, songs and various other forms. His piano arrangements of Bach's organ works are justly popular. His first opera was Der Rubin (1893), then came Ghismonda (1895), Gernot (1897), Die Abreise (1898), all of good Wagnerian extraction; then Kain and Der Improvisator (1900), showing evidences of an individual style, and, finally, Tiefland (1903), the one really successful opera of d'Albert, which seems to have become permanent in the German répertoire. Flauto solo (1905) and Tragaldabas (1907) have not made a great stir. D'Albert is of Scotch birth (Glasgow, 1864), though his father was a native of Germany.