Music

THE selections from Wagner’s writings, translated by Edward L. Burlingame, and collected in a volume under the title of Art-Life and Theories of Richard Wagner,¹ meet a want that has long been felt by our music-loving public, and which has most unaccountably remained unsupplied until now. What we have known about Wagner, with the exception of some few of his compositions, we have known simply by hearsay. As Mr. Burlingame says in his preface, “ It is safe to say that only a small minority of those who have taken a keen interest in the new school know of even the existence of the nine stout octavo volumes of ‘ collected works,’ which entitle Wagner to the name of its first literary and philosophical expositor, as he is otherwise entitled to that of its first composer.” And we may add that of the small minority who know of these “collected works,” an almost infinitesimal portion are in a condition to read them to any purpose, on account of the author’s wondrously involved and complex style. The matter itself in Wagner’s theoretical writings is no light dose to the average understanding. He is indeed a man of extraordinarily subtle intellect; his propositions turn upon exceedingly delicate hinges, and unless the reader follows him carefully, step by step, total misconception of his meaning is too liable to be the result. He is, moreover, a man of very unusual intellectual grasp ; his mind deals with the most complex and subtle material with the greatest ease ; he has every smallest detail of his subject at his fingers’ ends, and often when the perplexed reader is straining every nerve to keep his mental equilibrium in the midst of an argument, Wagner, in the fullness of his enthusiasm for his subject, will launch forth into metaphor upon metaphor, until his arguments are clothed in a perfect glow of poetical color. Like many men gifted with great clearness of mental vision, he takes the same quality for granted in his reader, and seems often to forget that what is perfectly clear to him may not be so to other people. Add to this that for intrinsic difficulty and involved phraseology his style seeks its fellow even in Germany, and we have abundant reasons for his works being little known in America. But this unfamiliarity with Wagner’s writings is much to be lamented, and we see the evil effects of it every day. The astounding theories of art that have been and still are constantly ascribed to Wagner by many of our musical critics would probably make the poetcomposer stare, if he were to see them. But if the difficulties that Wagner’s style places in the way of the general reader are great, the obstacles that it places in the path of the translator are frightful to contemplate. We have ourselves, in unguarded moments, tried to put passages from his writings into intelligible English, much, we fear, to the dismay of our readers. When we think of what Mr. Burlingame has done, it really makes our flesh creep. He seems to have fully appreciated the difficulty of his task. He says : —

“ Without asking any undue indulgence for the translations here given, justice to Herr Wagner himself makes it necessary to say something of the very unusual difficulties in the way of rendering his style satisfactorily into English, or into satisfactory English — the reader may interpret the phrase in whichever way he will. No explanation of these difficulties will be needed by any one who has ever read any of the original German; but to any one who has not, I can perhaps best explain the hardness of the labor by asking him to imagine such an undertaking as the endeavor to render Carlyle’s English into French; a task which does not seem to me, as I look back over my work, to present a greatly exaggerated comparison. Indeed, as far as the mere use of language is concerned, Wagner’s style has not a few characteristics of Carlyle’s. The absolute independence with which he coins words is one of these; and he indulges to the full in that inexhaustible resource of the German metaphysician, that immense length of sentence which does not hinder the intelligibility of his own language, but works much ruin if we endeavor to transfer it into our own. The very nature of his subject compels the coining of words and even phrases; the purely metaphysical character of much of it often renders almost necessary the length and intricacy of his clauses ; but behind this, the chief difficulty in rendering his writings is a certain diffuseness of style, the result of his being essentially a poet and an artist, rather than one accustomed to express himself in exact and careful prose. He constantly acknowledges this in his essays, expressing his dislike for critical and speculative writing ; but his translator is forced to refer to it also ; and while I have no wish to escape from any judgment of my work, I feel justified in believing that some passages which may appear too diffuse and vague are only unchanged representatives of similar parts in the original, passages where Wagner forgets the expositor, in a moment’s dreaming over ideals that need no explanation for himself.”

The problem of translating Wagner into English is, in fact, almost an insoluble one. There are only two alternatives. Either the sense, of the original must be put into good, easily flowing English, or the very risky attempt must be made to paraphrase Wagner’s style in some as yet undiscovered idiom, that shall have something in common with what is usually known as English, inasmuch as it is composed of English words. Mr. Burlingame has chosen the former, safer alternative, and has succeeded far better than we should have considered possible. Indeed, in reading his book, it is only our familiarity with the original that reminds us of the fact that we are reading a translation at all. The selections made are most judicious ; we had almost said that this book was the first judicious thing that has been done about Wagner, either musically or literarily, in this country. It is really an introduction to Wagner, beginning at the right end. All that it is absolutely indispensable for the intelligent music-lover to know about Wagner’s theories is contained in the two chapters, The Music of the Future, and The Purpose of the Opera. The other chapters in the book are interesting either from their connection with some of the author’s more familiar dramatic compositions, or from the light they throw upon passages in his life. Her Freischütz in Paris, especially the second part of it, entitled Le Freischutz, a Report to Germany, is an excellent example of Wagner’s caustic humor, and of the pitiless use he makes of sarcasm in musical criticism. Wagner’s wit is very grim, though often irresistibly funny. It is direct and unsparing, like Swift’s. It has little of the easy grace and lightness of touch that we find in Berlioz, who is after all the prince of musical humorists. But if Wagner’s wit is less subtle than Berlioz’s, it is often more laughter-provoking, and hits its mark with a more hearty good-will. Take, for instance, the following, from Le Freischutz, in which he descants upon the failure of the work at the Grand Opera : —

“ The Parisians in general are wont to look upon the performances of the Grand Opera as fairly faultless; fur they know of no establishment where they can see an opera better given. And so they could not be of any other opinion than that they had also seen the Freisch&3252;tz perfectly well performed, and certainly better than they could have seen it at any of the theatres of Germany. Everything which seemed to them tedious and foolish about the Freischütz, they were therefore not disposed to attribute to the faults of the performer, but at once adopted the conviction that what might be a masterpiece for Germans was for them mere twaddle. The remembrance of Robin des Bois ² confirmed them in this belief; for this rearrangement of Der Freischütz had made, as I had already sufficiently explained, an unheard-of success : and since this honor was not conferred upon the original also, the universal impression was naturally that the rearrangement must be infinitely better. And in truth, it did have the advantage that M. Berlioz’s terribly long recitative did not counteract the effect of the airs from Weber; and besides, the author of Robin des Bois had been so fortunate as to introduce Logic into the proceedings of his drama.

“ There is something very extraordinary about this logic. As the French have arranged their language according to its strictest rules, they demand that these rules must be respected in all that is spoken in that language. I have heard Frenchmen who were otherwise greatly pleased with the performance of the Freischütz, who nevertheless came back to this one point of objection— there was nothing logical in it. Now it had never occurred to me in my life to make logical researches into the Freisehütz, and I therefore asked precisely what one was to understand by the term in this case ? I learned that the number of the magic bullets gave special offense to the logical natures of the Frenchmen. Why — they said —seven bullets ? Why this unheard-of luxury ? Were not three enough ? three is a number that can be easily looked after and used, under all circumstances. How is it possible to bring about the sensible employment of seven bullets in one short act? There ought to be at least five entire acts, to give the proper opportunity for solving this problem correctly, and even then one would encounter the difficulty of disposing of several bullets in one act. For in truth it is no joke — that appeared evident — to have to do with such magic bullets; and how opposed it is to all common-sense, to imagine that two hunters could so thoughtlessly and without reason mold six such bullets on some fine morning— knowing, too, as they must have done, that there was something uncanny about the seventh !

“ A similar opinion was expressed, with undisguised dissatisfaction, about the catastrophe of the piece. ‘ How was it possible,’they said, ‘ that a shot aimed at a dove could apparently kill a maiden and really put to death a worthless hunter ? We grant that there is a possibility of a shot’s missing a dove and killing a human being,— such accidents unfortunately occasionally occur; but how a bride and all those who are present could imagine for five full minutes that they too were hit, that surpasses all belief! Besides, this shot is wanting in all dramatic probability. How much more logical it would be if the young hunter, in despair at missing his shot, should shoot himself through the head with the last bullet! The bride rushes toward him and tries to seize the pistol from his hand ; it goes off during the struggle, the bullet flies past the hunter — thanks to the efforts of the bride — and shoots down the godless comrade, placed in a direct range behind him ! There would be some logic in that! ”

It is true that Wagner does not always confine himself to irony when he has to do with anything that displeases him. In fact, he is rather famous for the skill and directness with which he can apply the lash when he chooses. Take the following quotation from The Music of the Future, in which he pays his respects to Italian opera:—

“I find in the frequent and shrill demands of our superficial musical dilettanti for ‘Melody, melody !' a confirmation of the belief that they derive their idea of melody from musical works in which, besides the melody, complete lack of melody occurs, — which makes what they think melodious appear so precious. In Italy, an audience assembled at the opera, which occupied its evening with amusement. To this entertainment there belonged music, sung upon the stage, music which was listened to from time to time during the pauses of the conversation; during the conversation and the constant exchange of visits between the boxes the music continued, fulfilling the same function for which music is introduced at great dinners,—that is, to encourage by its noise the otherwise timid chat to become louder and more lively. Such music as is played for this purpose fills out the great bulk of Italian opera; whereas, that which is really listened to makes up perhaps a twelfth part of it. An Italian opera must have at least one air that people like to listen to; if it is to succeed, there must be something to interrupt the conversation and be heard with interest at least six times; and the composer that can draw the attention of the audience a full dozen times to his music is celebrated as an inexhaustible musical genius. And what shall we think would become of such an audience if, suddenly finding itself in the presence of a work which demands a like attention through its whole duration and for all its parts, it should see itself torn from all its ordinary customs at musical performances ? And it it could not possibly identify with its beloved ‘ melody ’ that which in its most successful presentation could only pass for an improvement of that musical noise which, in its simpler application, only made agreeable conversation easier, while it now forces itself forward with the pretension that it really must be listened to ? Such an audience would call for its six or twelve melodies again, that it might gain opportunity and protection, in the intervals, for its conversation, which is after all the chief object of an opera-evening.

“ In truth, what from a singular narrowness is looked upon as richness, must needs appear to the more cultured mind as very poverty. The loud demands that are based upon this error may be pardoned in the public at large, but not in the art-critic.”

Wagner, like many other composers, has a very sincere and, we will own, a very proper contempt for that hapless anomaly, the art - critic, and is never loath to having a gentle fling at him when he finds a chance. As for instance when he says, —

“ What the true artist most desires to find is the ingenuousness of pure human sympathy; he fails to meet with this among our theatre-going public; then he is forced to seek for help from the side of the cultured artistic intellect — he must engage the mediation of criticism. The disgust I soon conceived of the public at length forced me into this needy attitude towards criticism; and it was precisely here, where I even sought it, and therefore could not reject it, that I came to fully understand the nature of our modern criticism, and now was forced to engage almost alone in opposition to it.

“ What I have since published concerning art does not constitute, as many have supposed, an appeal to popular opinion, but in these writings I turned from the modern public, which I had to give up as a senseless, heartless mass, and set my face against criticism, i. e., against uncritical, false criticism, that criticism which is guided neither by sympathy nor by correct understanding; which rests simply on the ignorance of the masses, which lives by this ignorance, and even favors it from motives of self-interest.

I say I set my face against this kind of criticism ; I did not appeal to it. For the thought even of giving it a true direction can never occur to any one who has already been obliged to abandon his hopes of the public. The public is, at least, not willful in its perverseness, whereas criticism is of set purpose and radically perverse. Still I ever made my appeal, as was unavoidable in literary compositions, only to criticism, that is, to the new criticism of right reason; in other words, the understanding, which never for a moment deserts its constant support, right feeling. Thus I did not appeal to the critical routine of the old method, which was quite divorced from feeling — a method based on the same perversion of feeling and the same stupidity which is seen in the public. My appeal was to the enlightened judgment of those cultured minds which, like my own, are as ill-content with the modern public as with the criticism of the present day.”

Of the value of the volume there can be no two opinions. However various the opinions may be about the truth or falsehood of Wagner’s musical theories, all agree that he is one of the leading writers on æsthetics of our time, and we can only rejoice that he comes before the American public in so very readable a shape. We congratulate Mr. Burlingame upon having in a great measure avoided those distressing mistakes in musical terminology that have defaced every English translation from the German or French (not excepting theoretical works) that we have yet seen. Another comparatively small matter is also worth mentioning. It is a great comfort to see clarinet spelt without an o! We feel personally grateful to any one who will help hunt all clarionets and violincellos from our much-suffering earth.

— Sarah Tytler’s Musical Composers and their Works³ is a concise and readable enough compendium of the principal facts in the lives of most of the noteworthy composers from Dunstable, Palestrina, and Orlando Gibbons, down to the present day. The author depends for her facts, and indeed for many of her ideas, upon well-known authorities, and there neither is, nor pretends to be, much original matter in the book, It will no doubt be found useful as a schoolbook, and is better than anything we know of in so concise a shape.

— In sheet-music we notice First Loss,⁴ by Kulling, as an uncommonly good song for a high voice. The Echo,⁵ by the same composer, is commonplace at best, but gains much by the way the accompaniment is put upon the piano-forte.

— Max Mueller s Tuberose⁶ is pleasing and well written, though perhaps a thought too psalm-tune-like ; a quality which the flowing accompaniment does not quite counteract.