Richard Wagner His Life and His Dramas / A Biographical Study of the Man and an Explanation of His Work

by W. J. Henderson

The article on "Judaism in Music" was printed in Brendel's Neue Zeitschrift für Musik for Sept. 3 and 6, 1850. Eleven masters at the Leipsic conservatory, where Brendel lectured on the history of music, wrote to him asking him to resign or reveal the name of the author. He refused to do either, thereby leaving the eleven irate masters in a ludicrous position. But the hostility of the press to Wagner was aroused by the article, for his authorship was speedily suspected. In 1869 he issued a revised and enlarged edition of this article and then a host of replies appeared. None of them, however, dealt candidly with the artistic questions. Most of them rested with accusing Wagner of assailing rival composers because they were Jews. The chief points made in Wagner's article were that the Jews were not an artistic people, that they could not be so because they were not sincere, because they had no nation, no home, no language, but lived to please the people of the country in which they chanced to be and whose language they spoke. Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer were quoted as examples.

In "Opera and Drama" Wagner set forth the principles which, according to him, should govern the creation of art work for the stage. These principles we shall have opportunity to examine in detail when we come to the study of the Wagnerian theories. Let it suffice here to quote Muncker's admirable summary of the essay:

"Systematically he examined in what manner all the arts, plastic, mimic, phonetic and oral, had in the antique tragedy combined to the highest mutual purposes, and how thereafter, released from this close and lifelike union, the single arts had in their individual development either stagnated or degenerated. He refused to acknowledge the objections that only the mild atmosphere of Greece had been able to ripen the artistic power of intuition and formation, out of which the Attic tragedy had grown. Only the historical man, the man independent of nature, has awakened art to life; and only he, noble and strong, who through the highest power of love has attained true liberty, can newly create the vanished dramatic work of art, just as he alone, his life and death, is its subject; for this reason there can be only one principal consideration for art, and that is the true nature of the human race. Strictly Wagner weighed the unsuccessful attempts of the last century externally to combine the sister arts (without any of them giving up their egotistic purposes) in the oratorio and particularly in the opera, the trysting place of their most selfish endeavours. He contrasted with these inorganic species the loving union of the single arts in the work of art of the future, in the true drama, that, like the Attic tragedy, employed the same artistic means, only on a greater scale and with a higher technical perfection, in the same manner and for the same purposes. Like the Attic tragedy, it is to be represented by the people, or rather the totality of different artists is to represent it for the people; just, however, as the single arts can here for the first time freely and naturally unfold their innermost nature, so the individuality of the single artist can, just in that community with the whole, significantly develop itself."

In this essay he ruthlessly exposed the musical shallowness of Rossini and Meyerbeer. He saw at the time that his criticism of the latter would expose him to the charge of ingratitude, but the artist in him prevailed, and he spoke his mind freely. It should be added that he praised certain passages in Meyerbeer's works, especially the great duet in the fourth act of "Les Huguenots."

In the early years of his exile he undertook once more the task of writing an opera for Paris. He went so far as to make a prose sketch of a libretto entitled "Wieland the Smith." In after years he offered the book to Liszt, saying that it reminded him of a period of pain. The labour of writing this work was distasteful to him, and he began it only at the earnest solicitation of his wife and Liszt. The sketch, which is an elaborated scenario, is included in Mr. Ellis's translation of the prose works.

The only musical work which Wagner did in the early years at Zurich was the conducting of some orchestral concerts, and the superintending of performances at the city theatre. It was at this time that Wagner's acquaintance with the afterward famous pianist and conductor, Hans von Bülow, began. Von Bülow had abandoned the career planned for him by his father and gone to Zurich literally to throw himself at the feet of Wagner. The master secured him the post of assistant conductor at the opera, where he supported his protégé against the intriguing of the singers and the orchestra. After six months of experience there Von Bülow was sent with a letter of introduction from Wagner to Liszt, whose pupil he became, and whose daughter Cosima he married. Little did either he or Wagner think at the time that he would be conductor of Wagner's greatest works, and that his wife would become the second spouse of the famous composer.

The year 1850 was made a memorable one in Wagner's life by the first performance of "Lohengrin," which had slept in silence for three years. In the "Communication to My Friends" Wagner wrote of the movement toward the production thus:

"At the end of my latest stay in Paris, as I lay ill and wretched, gazing brooding into space, my eye fell on the score of my already almost quite forgotten 'Lohengrin.' It filled me with a sudden grief to think that these notes should never ring from off the death-wan paper. Two words I wrote to Liszt. His answer was none other than an announcement of preparations the most sumptuous—for the modest means of Weimar—for 'Lohengrin's' production."

Even at this distance the words of that letter of April 21, 1850, are pathetic:

"Dear Friend: I have just been looking through the score of my 'Lohengrin.' I very seldom read my own works. An immense desire has sprung up in me to have this work performed. I address this wish to your heart: Perform my 'Lohengrin'! You are the only one to whom I could address this prayer; to none but you should I entrust the creation of this opera; to you I give it with perfect and joyous confidence."