On the whole, German opera of the more ambitious kind cannot be said to have produced much that is likely to be durable between Wagner and Strauss. The indubitable master works have been for the most part in the lighter genres—the delightful Der Widerspenstigen Zähmung (1874) of Hermann Götz (1840-1876), the Barbier von Bagdad (1858) of Peter Cornelius (1824-1874) (a gem of grace and humor), and the Hänsel und Gretel (1893) of Engelbert Humperdinck, in which the Wagnerian polyphony is applied with the happiest effect to a style that is the purest distillation of the German folk-spirit. Of Cornelius's work we have spoken elsewhere (Vol. II, pp. 380f), of Humperdinck we shall have something to say presently. Here let us dwell for a moment on Götz. His one finished opera (a second, Francesca da Rimini, he did not live to finish) has been called a 'little Meistersinger.' Whether applied with justice or not, this epithet indicates the work's spiritual relationship. Yet, Wagnerian that he is, this classification must be made with reserve. A close friend of Brahms, he was certainly influenced by that master—in a measure he combines the rich and varied texture of Brahms' chamber music with the symphonic style of the Meistersinger. Niemann points out other influences. 'He takes Jensen by the left hand, Cornelius by the right; like both of these, he is lyrist and worker in detail without a real dramatic vein and a model of the idealistic German master of an older time.' Der Widerspenstigen Zähmung was first heard in 1874 in Mannheim and achieved wide popularity. It is based on Shakespeare ('Taming of the Shrew'), and an English text was used in England. Götz was born in Königsberg and died near Zürich. He was a pupil of Köhler, Stern, Bülow and Ulrich, and was organist in Winterthur from 1867 to 1870, when failing health forced him into retirement.
Hugo Wolf's[38] Der Corregidor (1896) is, in its endless flow of melody and its sustained vitality of characterization, perhaps the nearest approach in modern music to the Meistersinger; for some reason or other, however, a work that is a pure delight in the home does not seem able to maintain itself on the stage. A second opera of Wolf's, Manuel Venegas, in which we can trace the same extraordinary simplification and clarification of style that is evident in his latest songs, remained only a fragment at his death. The successes, not less than the failures, of these and other men showed clearly that the further they got from the main Wagnerian stream the safer they were. Cornelius, though living in Wagner's immediate environment and cherishing a passionate admiration for the great man, knew well that his own salvation lay in trying to write as if Wagner had never lived. The Barbier von Bagdad was written some years before the composition of the Meistersinger had begun; if Cornelius went anywhere for a model for his own work it was to the Benvenuto Cellini of Berlioz. He knew the danger he was in during the composition of his second opera, Der Cid, and strove desperately to shut out Wagner from his mind at that time; he did not want, as he put it, simply to hatch Wagnerian eggs. If Der Cid (1865) fails, it is not because of any Wagnerian influence, but because Cornelius's genius was of too light a tissue for so big a stage subject. Nevertheless, if he does not wholly fill the dramatic frame, he comes very near doing so; it is no small dramatic gift that is shown in such passages as the Trauermarsch in the second scene of the first act and the subsequent monologue of Chimene, in Chimene's scena in the second scene of the second act, and in most of the choral writing. A third opera, Gunlöd, was orchestrated by Lassen and Hoffbauer and produced seventeen years after Cornelius's death.
Modern German Musical Dramatists:
Ludwig Thuille Hans Pfitzner
Engelbert Humperdinck Karl Goldmark
Humperdinck seems destined to go down to posterity as the composer of one work. His Hänsel und Gretel owes its incomparable charm not to the Wagnerianisms of it, which lie only on the surface, but to its expressing once for all the very soul of a certain order of German folk-song and German Kindlichkeit. His later works—Die sieben Geislein (1897), Dornröschen (1902), and the comic opera Die Heirat wider Willen (1905), though containing much beautiful music, have on the whole failed to convince the world that Humperdinck has any new chapter to add to German opera. For this his librettists must perhaps share the blame with him. Die Königskinder (1898), which was originally a melodrama, was recast as an opera in 1908 and, at least in America, was more successful. Besides these Humperdinck wrote incidental music for Aristophanes' Lysistrata, Shakespeare's 'A Winter's Tale' and 'Tempest.' Two choral ballads preceded the operas and a 'Moorish Rhapsody' (1898) was composed for the Leeds Festival. Humperdinck was born in Siegburg (Rhineland), studied at the Cologne Conservatory, also in Munich and in Italy. He taught for a time in Barcelona (Spain) and in Frankfort (Hoch Conservatory), and in 1900 became head of a master school of composition in Berlin with the title of royal professor and member of the senate of the Academy of Arts.
A worthy companion to Hänsel und Gretel is the Lobetanz (1898) of Ludwig Thuille (1861-1907). Thuille's touch is lighter than Humperdinck's. Thuille was a highly esteemed artist, especially among the Munich circle of musicians. He is the only one of the group of important composers settled there since Rheinberger's demise that may be said to have founded a 'school.' He is the heir and successor of Rheinberger and by virtue of his pedagogic talent the master of all the younger South German moderns. Though Lobetanz (which was preceded by Theuerdank, 1897, and Gugeline, 1901) is the best known of his works, the chamber music of his later period has probably the most permanent value.[39] Thuille was born in Bozen (Tyrol) and died in Munich, where he was professor at the Royal Academy of Music.
Some success has been won by the Donna Anna (1895) of E. N. von Reznicek (born 1860), a showy work compact of many styles—grand opera, operetta, the early Verdi, Tannhäuser, and the Spanish 'national' idiom all jostling each other's elbows. There is little real differentiation of character; such differentiation as there is is only in musical externals—in costume rather than in psychology. In Germany a certain following is much devoted to Hans Pfitzner, whose opera Der arme Heinrich was produced in 1895, and his Die Rose vom Liebesgarten in 1901. Pfitzner is a musician of more earnestness than inspiration. He is technically well equipped, and all that he does indicates refinement and intelligence; but he lacks the imagination that fuses into new life whatever material it touches. (He has also written some fairly expressive songs and a small amount of chamber music.) Pfitzner, like Alex. Ritter, is of Russian birth, being born (of German parents) in Moscow in 1869. His father and the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt were the sources of his musical education. Since 1892 he has taught and conducted in various places (Coblentz, Mainz, Berlin, Munich). In 1908 he became municipal musical director and director of the conservatory at Strassburg. Besides the two operas he has written music for Ibsen's play, 'The Festival of Solhaug' (1889), also for Kleist's Kätchen von Heilbronn (1908) and Ilse von Stach's Christelflein. An orchestral Scherzo (1888), several choral works and vocal works with orchestra complete the list of his works besides those mentioned above.
For the sake of completeness, brief mention must here be made of the German Volksoper, a comparatively unambitious genre in which much good work has been done. Among its best products in recent years are the quick-witted Versiegelt (1908) of Leo Blech (born 1871), and the Barbarina of Otto Neitzel (born 1852).