Music

IN the complete edition of Richard Wagner’s collected writings and poems, that has recently been published in Leipzig,¹ we have undoubtedly one of the most considerable items in the esthetic literature of our day. Nine octavo volumes of from three hundred and fifty to four hundred pages each, coming from the pen of a man whose influence, either as fanatical bugbear or inspired prophet, has made itself felt throughout the musical world for the last two or three decades, claim a respectful attention even from the author’s most convinced opponents. Genius or no genius of the musical or poetic kind, the man has at least the genius of sincerity and perseverance. Of him it might have been said, as Mirabeau said of Robespierre : “ This man will do somewhat; he believes every word he says ; ” and whether we regard his artistic career as an enchanting vision of an esthetic and social millennium now made possible, or as a hideous nightmare of chaos regained, we may be assured that for good or for evil he has done and been something real; that his existence is more than a sham.

His career has thus far certainly been a remarkable one. Such success as he has had, has been genuine; the spontaneous effect, of some efficient cause to be found in his works themselves, not the factitious result of much talking. If success were only to be got by mere conciliation of opponents, surely Wagner was the last man to have succeeded. Of all men in the world he was the least calculated by nature to conciliate. Selfassertion in its most violent and even offensive forms, wholesale denunciation of opponents, scathing sarcasm, and direct vituperation, though never rising to the hysterical pitch, have ever been his weapons. He has succeeded in spite of everything that he has done to prevent success. One day he launches forth a volley of most damaging criticism, not unmixed with personalities, at the head of pedantry and “ Modern Romanticism,” only to find on the morrow his operas applauded in the very citadel of “ Modern Romanticism ” and antiquarianisi In spite of his consistent treatment of the modern Italian opera-school as mere musical infants, or worse, mere clap-trap amusement purveyors to an emasculated public, Lohengrin has had a marked success in Bologna. He has shown up Meyerbeer’s weaknesses and artificialities with such intensity of language and such searching brilliancy of satire as it has been the fate of few composers to call forth; yet even in Paris itself, where the worship of Meyerbeer, like that of Mendelssohn in England, is carried to an extent that must be witnessed to be believed in, — even in Paris, though the tunes and cat-calls of a Jockey-club deprived of its after-dinner ballet could make Tannhäuser inaudible, they could not make it forgotten; and at the Cirque Napoléon (now Cirque National) and the Théâtre Lyrique, Wagner has gained too firm a foothold to be easily ousted; and though the management in the rue le Pelletier, with an eye to its subscription list, might sleekly announce that it would no longer oppose the judgment of an intelligent public by keeping Tannhäuser on the boards, M. Pasdeloup, some few years afterward, told the hissers of the Boulevard des Filles du Calvaire to take themselves home and let the audience hear the Lohengrin music in peace ; which, finding further hissing unprofitable, they accordingly did. So ended what we believe was the last antiWagner demonstration in Paris; in silent, not contemptuous, going away. What the secret of Wagner’s success has particularly been, would, at this time, be hard to say. Great power over men and the minds of men he certainly has — supported, as we have said, by great sincerity and an invincible perseverance ; above all by an unquenchable enthusiasm. The man is nothing if not intense, he can do nothing on a small scale, of the quantity and quality of his genius we can by no means judge, but of his being thoroughly in earnest every one must be convinced by this time.

In the present edition of his literary and poetical works, we find the texts to all his operas and musical dramas; his larger theoretical and controversial essays : Art and the Revolution, The Work-of art of the Future, Art and Climate, Opera and Drama, Concerning the State and Religion, German Art and German Politics ; and a host of smaller writings of all descriptions, from short occasional poems and (not so short) occasional speeches, burlesque political farces, reports on various art projects, and newspaper critiques, to essays esthetic, polemical, and controversial, almost without end. In an appendix to the ninth volume are collected all that he has written about the Bayreuth Festival, together with six architectural plans of the projected opera-house.

Throughout all his critical and controversial writings the violent, indomitable spirit of the man distinctly shows itself, uncompromising in all things. Yet even in his most violent and vituperative moments, he never quite loses head. Hysterical raving he has no taste, perhaps no capacity for, and even under his most turgid bombast, amid bis most sensuous metaphors, we can always trace a fixed principle resolutely worked out, without wavering or hesitation. He never seems to be disturbed by skepticism or half-faith ; what he feels and believes, he feels and believes with his whole soul and being. These writings put before the reader in the fullest and most distinct shape what his art-faith essentially is. That the subject is an important one in art,perhaps even the all-important one of our day, is sufficiently evident from the interest it has excited, and from the fundamental principles of art that are at stake in the discussion.

According to Wagner, the “ work-of-art of the future,” in other words, the ideal work-of-art, the crowning object and end of all artistic working and striving, is the musical drama; of which we have already an imperfect and distorted example in the opera. The function that music is to fulfill in this perfect lyric drama is perhaps as clearly shown in his statement of the fundamental mistake in the opera, as in any direct confession of faith that we can call to mind. He says : “ The mistake in the artform of the opera has been, that the means of expression (music) has been made the end of expression, and the end of expression (the drama) the means.” In other words, music, instead of being made the means of intensifying and vivifying the expression of the dramatic intention, has, in the opera, been made the be-all and end-all; the text being a secondary matter, a mere excuse for the music. According to Wagner, music in its highest form is the outgrowth and necessary complement of poetry. Poetry places certain ideas before the mind, and to a certain extent expresses them ; music steps in where poetry leaves off, and carries the expression to the highest pitch of intensity. Music that has not its origin in poetry is merely sensuous, without power of definite expression, simply because there is nothing definite to express ; a mere bit of absolute intensity, of unapplied force thrown out into the world at random, a lever without a fulcrum, an effect without a cause. This doctrine he has worked out in all its smallest details, with a power of language and poetic imagery that are at times astounding. It would carry us too far to look into the validity of this theory at present; let it suffice to say that the artistic scheme that he has built up on this foundation is a thoroughly self-consistent one, and has rid the opera of many palpable absurdities.

As to Wagner’s purely musical theories, it must be borne in mind that, as he makes music wholly dependent upon the dramatic intention, his music necessarily' follows an entirely different law of development from any music that is self-dependent and has no definite poetic basis. Those who have called Wagner’s music lawless, wanting in an internal necessity of being, and a definite plan or system of development, have shot wide of the mark.

How much evidence there is in it of genius, original creative power, or esthetic sensibility is another question ; but that his music, in his later works at least, follows a distinct and consistent plan can be doubted only by a very superficial observer. It does not, certainly, follow the rules we find set down in treatises on harmony and counterpoint, but that does not prove that it has no rules of its own. To quote from Hans Sachs in Wagner’s own Meistersinger: —

In short, his music has a fundamentally different anatomy from that of any of his great predecessors in art, and cannot be measured by the old musical yard-sticks. It has been objected that he has not been true to his own principles in art; that, in spite of his new theories, much of his music has a purely musical, not a dramatic or poetical basis. This is undeniably true, especially in his earlier works, and is, moreover, perfectly natural. No young reformer or innovator in art, religion, or what not, if he be so from irresistible conviction, and not from a natural taste for image-breaking, can all at once break loose from old, timehonored traditions, endeared to him by many an exalting association. No sincere artist will try the new, untrodden path, until he has tried the old beaten way and found it too narrow. Thus it is only in his later works that Wagner has fully applied his theories. His first published grand opera, Rienzi, written in 1838 and ’39, is in no essential different in form from the standard French grand opera of Meyerbeer and Halévy. In the Fliegende Holländer he begins to give evidence of the revolution that was to take place in his style, a revolution which became more and more marked, until in Tristan und Isolde he has entirely left the beaten track and developed his peculiar theories to the fullest extent.

In the first volume of his writings, he gives us a short autobiography of himself, of which a slight sketch may not be uninteresting.

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig, on the twenty-second of May, 1813. He does not seem to have developed any marked musical talent at a very early age, although he mentions being able to play a couple of little popular airs on the pianoforte when seven years old. Carl Maria von Weber’s Freischütz strangely attracted him when a boy ; he even went to the length of learning to play the overture by heart; the result of which study was his teacher’s prophecy : “ that he would never come to any good.” “ He was about right, for in my whole life I have never learned to play the piano-forte,” Wagner says. He seems, however, to have continued the objectionable practice of scrambling through overtures with what “most horrible fingering ” his young fingers might find out for themselves. Upon the whole, he was a most impressionable youth, with little talent for strict application to anything in particular, but gifted with a large fund of enthusiasm for anything that happened to strike his fancy. His first decided bent seems to have been towards poetry, and we find him cutting quite a respectable figure at school, especially in writing verses and in the Greek poets. At one time his ardor for poetry led him to study English, that he might read Shakespeare in the original, which burst of enthusiasm ended in unbounded admiration for the poet, but also in a thorough disgust for the difficulties of the English language, for he soon gave up the study. He nevertheless determined upon making Shakespeare his model, and began in secret a grand tragedy, a sort of mixture of Hamlet and King Lear. He was then fourteen or fifteen years old. Of this literary effort he writes; “The plan was most sublime ; forty-four people died in the course of the piece, and in working it up, I found myself forced to have most of them reappear as ghosts, since the dramatis personœ would not have otherwise held out for the last acts.” He worked for two years upon this play, much, apparently, to the detriment. of his school studies.

He meanwhile finds time to go to the Gewandhaus concerts and hear some compositions of Beethoven, which have a strong effect upon him ; Egmont especially inspiring him to such a degree that he resolves upon writing similar incidental music to his tragedy. “Although,” he says, “I never doubted being able to write this indispensable music myself, I yet held it expedient to first get at least an idea of some of the fundamental rules of thorough-bass.” At this study he flies with his usual ardor, finding however more difficulties than he expected; but he has a natural taste for overcoming obstacles, especially when they do not spring up in his regular school studies, and though the difficulties are more and more exasperating, yet they are also fascinating in a strange way ; at last he determines to be a musician outright. In the midst of his studies his family discover the tragedy, upon which discovery there ensues much grave reprimanding. Two years of neglected studies, waste of time, general laziness in all desirable directions, and too strong a tendency to grasp at forbidden fruit! Of sermonizing he gets enough and to spare, and bears it, we can imagine, with due amount of recalcitrant growling, and impetuous, volcanic flaring up. He is hard put to it to persuade his family that this new consuming passion for music is more than a temporary one, not having shown much steadiness of character in any direction, and being in general rather a discouragement to the parental mind. He lias now arrived at the age of sixteen. He nevertheless persists in his undertaking in spite of parental frowning; and studies music in the wildest, inconsequent way, to the despair of teacher and friends, He at last finds that the rudiments are beneath his notice; he prefers writing overtures for full orchestra, and even has one performed at the Leipzig theatre. Of this performance he says : —

“ This overture was the culminating point of my nonsensicalities. For the easier comprehension of those who might wish to study the score, I had intended to write it out in three different inks; the strings red, the flutes and reeds green, and the brass black. Beethoven’s ninth symphony was to have been a Pleyel sonata compared with this wondrously combined overture. The thing that was of especial injury to me at the performance was the regular recurrence, every four bars throughout the whole overture, of a fortissimo stroke on the kettledrums. The public passed, from their first astonishment at the obstinate pertinacity of the drummer, to unconcealed ill-humor, and finally to a most distressing joviality. This first performance of a piece of my own composition left a strong impression on me.”

Then comes the Revolution of July. Our young Wagner rushes headlong into revolutionizing ; he arrives at the conviction that “every active man should exclusively occupy himself with politics,” shuns all society but that of political literati; yet, not to break entirely with his old love, music, he begins an overture, this time on a political theme, like an orchestral Theodor Körner. At last he enters a university to attend lectures on philosophy and esthetics, but does not, seemingly, profit by his opportunities,— now an old story. He prefers taking another of his wild, spasmodic plunges, this time into all sorts of dissipation, and with such hearty good-will, that he soon disgusts himself with life of that sort, and really begins to feel the necessity of doing something better than playing with the arts and vices. He now for the first time applies himself seriously to music, having providentially, as he calls it, hit upon the right instructor, Theodor Weinlich, of the St. Thomas School in Leipzig. He works with a will, struggling in the mazes of counterpoint until he at last comes out victorious, a master of musical anatomy. His teacher dismisses him with: “ What you have appropriated to yourself by these dry studies is called ‘ Self-dependence.’” From this moment Wagner shows himself thoroughly in earnest about his art; he studies Beethoven and Mozart as only a German with a fixed purpose can study. He composes also to some extent, writing, among other things, an overture and a symphony, both of which are publicly performed, not without gratifying applause. He also writes an opera — Die Feen — which was never performed, and which, like all his earlier works, is now forgotten. Thus he continues, studying and composing, until we see him appointed Music Director at Magdeburg in the summer of 1834. He has a rapidly growing success as a conductor, and composes another opera (doing both text and music himself, as he has done ever afterwards), entitled Das Liebesverbot, founded upon Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, which he finishes in the spring of 1836, but so near the end of the opera season, that at the performance, which he presses on with characteristic energy, everything is at odds and ends ; the prompter doing more than the singers, who do not in the least know their parts, and the whole resulting in general confusion and musical Babel. Some few numbers, however, less badly sung than the rest, are worthily applauded. A second performance so near the end of the season is out of the question. In the autumn he marries in Königsberg, — whom we do not find out, — without a groschen in his pockets, and with a large crop of debts standing against him. Now succeed years of poverty and vexations of all kinds, during which we find him in various parts of Germany, and at last in Paris, where he writes his first grand opera, Rienzi, surrounded by a thousand petty trials, of which want of bread and butter is not the least.

Rienzi is soon followed by Der Fliegende Holländer the music of which he writes in seven weeks. Neither of these operas, however, get performed in Paris. An attempt to revive his old Liebesverbot also fails, and after two years of unhappy struggling for mere existence, he returns to Germany in 1842. Here both Rienzi and the Holländer are brought out in some of the principal cities. At length, through the influence of Franz Liszt, then at the height of his fame as a virtuoso, and whose acquaintance he had made in Paris, his Tannhäuser is brought out in Dresden. From this moment his success as a composer is assured. His acquaintance with Liszt (since then his fatherin-law) soon ripens into the warmest and most enthusiastic friendship. His career since the performance of Tannhäuser being pretty generally known, we stop here. His other Operas are Lohengrin, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and his great trilogy, Der Ring des Nibelungen, which consists of four connected musical dramas, namely: the introductory Das Rheingold, and Die Walkūre, Siegfried, and Die Götterdämmerung. The last of these is not yet published.

— In piano-forte music,³ L. M. Gottschalk’s posthumous Chant de Guerre will be interesting to the late pianist’s admirers. It would be hardly fair to criticise the composition from a musical point of view, as there are so few musical qualities in it. It is certainly the most madcap piece of whirring and whizzing front key to key, but yet not without a certain charm as a sort of rmisigtl alcohol. A posthumous work by Gottschalk is in itself a sort of ghastly joke, rather like a posthumous performance on the tight-rope; for Gottschalk’s music has died with him without hope of resuscitation in this world. As a pianist and composer he occupied a thoroughly unique position, as much so indeed as Chopin, though on a different level. As there was only one Chopin, so there was only one Gottschalk. As Chopin was the most perfect exponent of the Polish element in music, so was Gottschalk the great interpreter of the Hispano-Ethiopian element, and by as much as the Polish esthetic spirit is higher and more developed than the Negro, by so much was Chopin higher than Gottschalk. Add also the difference that, while Chopin was a man of distinctly musical sensibility and culture, Gottschalk was, as far as music is concerned, little better than an untutored savage. But he had a spark of most undeniable original genius, and to hear him play his own compositions was a musical experience entirely unique of its kind. As he often could not play passages from other composers (only think of a man of his really astounding technique working for a week over one of the parts of Moscheles’s Ilommage à Händel and then giving it up in despair !),so was he the only man who could really play his own works. The charm that he lent to such futilities ns the Last Hope, and the maddening entrain with which he played his Bamhoula and Banjo was us inimitable as it is indescribable. He was something more than merely astonishing, he was irresistibly fascinating.

Stephen A. Emery’s Grasshopper’s Story is quite a fascinating little bit of musical baby-talk, such as only a man who can talk plainly when he will, can trust himself in without being insipid or grotesque. Mr. Emery has shown in some of his previous compositions that he is as far as possible from being a musical infant himself, and this little piece, recalling the nursery as it does, is neither weak nor commonplace.

Of Gounod’s Marche Romaine, when we have said that it was written by Gounod and was performed on the anniversary of the coronation of his Holiness, Pius IX., we have said all that is noteworthy about it.

— In vocal music⁴ Gabussi’s duet The Fortune-teller and Vincenzo Cirillo’s Barcarolle are both good specimens of straightforward, unaffected Italian writing, not remarkable for distinct individual inspiration, but having a healthy, natural melody and generally correct harmony (which is a comfort), and a good deal of national Italian Spirit.

Ciro Pinsuti’s Fly forth, O Gentle Dove is well written and would be fascinating and worth the composer’s while, if Hatton and Claribel and a host of others had not long ago worn that sort of tune quite threadbare.

Berthold Tours’s Violets in the Snow tries hard to be something, and in some places almost succeeds, but in many passages shows the composer not to be very sure on his musical legs, and rather liable to be tripped up when he attempts anything like a striking effect in modulation.