Chapter 7

My subject is by no means exhausted, but for fear of fatiguing the reader with an excess of details I will close with a few facts regarding Richard Wagner's method of composing. I am indebted for these facts to the kindness of Herr Seidl, of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, who was Wagner's secretary for several years, and helped him prepare "Götterdämmerung" and "Parsifal" for the press.

Like his famous predecessors, Wagner always carried some sheets of music paper in his pocket, on which he jotted down with a pencil such ideas as came to him on solitary walks, or at other times. These he gave to his wife, who inked them over and arranged them in piles. In these sketches the vocal part was always written out in full, while the orchestral part was roughly indicated in two or more additional staves. Frau Cosima has preserved most of these sketches, and they will doubtless some day be reproduced in fac-simile, like some of Beethoven's.

Whenever Wagner was in the mood for composing he would say to Herr Seidl, "Bring me my sketches." Then he would retire to his composing room, to which no one was ever admitted, not even his wife and children. At lunch-time, the servant would bring something to the ante-room, without being allowed to see the master in his sanctum. How Wagner conducted himself there is not known, except that strange vocal sounds, and a few passionate chords on the piano would occasionally reach the ears of neighbors. Wagner appears to have used his piano just as Beethoven did his, even after he had become deaf:--as a sort of lightning-rod for his fervent emotions.

Much nonsense has been written concerning the fact that Wagner used to wear gaudy costumes of silk and satin while he was composing, and that he had colored glass in his windows, which gave every object a mysterious aspect. He was called an imitator of the eccentric King of Bavaria, and some went so far as to declare him insane. But in truth, Wagner was simply endeavoring to put himself into an atmosphere most favorable for dramatic creation. We all know how much clothes help to make a man, in more than one sense; and any one who has ever taken part in private theatricals will remember how much the costume helped him to get into the proper frame of mind for interpreting his rôle. This was all that Wagner aimed at in wearing his mediæval costumes; and the wonderful realism and vividness of his dramatic conceptions certainly more than justify the unusual methods he pursued to attain them.

After elaborating the melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic details of his scores, Wagner considered his main task done, and the orchestration was completed down-stairs in his music room. In his earliest operas Wagner did not write his scenes in their regular order, but took those first which specially proffered themselves. Of the "Flying Dutchman," for instance, he wrote the spinning chorus first, and he was delighted to find on this occasion, as he himself says, that he could still compose after a long interruption. He used a piano but rather to stimulate and correct than to invent. In his later works the piano is absolutely out of the question. He wrote the music, scene after scene, following the text; and the conception of the whole score is so absolutely orchestral that the piano cannot even give as faint a notion of it as a photograph can give of the splendors of a Titian. Wagner, as he himself tells us, was unable to play his scores on the piano, but always tried to get Liszt to do that for him.

It is possible that some of my readers have never seen a full orchestral score of "Siegfried" or "Tristan." If so, I advise them to go to a music store and look at one as a matter of curiosity. They will find a large quarto volume, every page of which represents only one line of music. There are separate staves for the violins, violas, cellos, double basses, flutes, bassoons, clarinets, horns, tubas, trombones, kettle-drums, etc., each family forming a quartette in itself, and each having its own peculiar emotional quality. In conducting an opera the Kapellmeister has to keep his eye and ear at the same time on each of these groups, as well as on the vocal parts and scenic effects. If this requires a talent rarely found among musicians, how very much greater must be the mind which created this complicated operatic score! No one who tries to realize what this implies, and remembers that Wagner wrote several of his best music dramas among the mountains of Switzerland, years before he could dream of ever hearing the countless new harmonies and orchestral tone-colors which he had discovered, can deny, I think, that I was right in maintaining that the composing of an opera is the most wonderful achievement of human genius.

III

SCHUMANN

AS MIRRORED IN HIS LETTERS

Clara Schumann, the most gifted woman that has ever chosen music as a profession, and who, at the age of sixty-nine, still continues to be among the most fascinating of pianists, placed the musical world under additional obligations when she issued three years ago the collection of private letters, written by Schumann between the ages of eighteen and thirty (1827-40), partly to her, partly to his mother, and other relatives, friends, and business associates. She was prompted to this act not only by the consciousness that there are many literary gems in the correspondence which should not be lost to the world, but by the thought that more is generally known of Schumann's eccentricities than of his real traits of character. Inasmuch as a wretched script was one of the most conspicuous of these eccentricities, it is fortunate that his wife lived to edit his letters; but even she, though familiar with his handwriting during many years of courtship and marriage, was not infrequently obliged to interpolate a conjectural word. Schumann had a genuine vein of humor, which he reveals in his correspondence as in his compositions and criticisms. He was aware that his manuscript was not a model of caligraphy, but, on being remonstrated with, he passionately declared he could not do any better, promising, however, sarcastically that, as a predestined diplomat, he would keep an amanuensis in future. And on page 245 begins a long letter to Clara which presents a curious appearance. Every twentieth word or so is placed between two vertical lines, regarding which the reader is kept in the dark until he comes to this postscript: "In great haste, owing to business affairs, I add a sort of lexicon of indistinctly written words, which I have placed within brackets. This will probably make the letter appear very picturesque and piquant. The idea is not so bad. Adio, clarissima Cara, cara Clarissima." Then follows the "lexicon" of twenty words, including his own signature.

Although, in a semi-humorous vein, Schumann repeatedly alludes in these letters to the "foregone conclusion" that they will some day be printed, there is hardly any indication that such a thought was ever in his mind while writing them. They are, in fact, full of confidences and confessions, some of which he could not have been very ambitious to see in print; such as his frequent appeals for "more ducats," during his student days, and his sophistically ingenious excuses for needing so much money, placed side by side with his frank admission that he had no talent for economy, and was very fond of cigars, wine, and especially travelling. In one of the most amusing of the letters, he advances twelve reasons why his mother should send him about $200 to enable him to see Switzerland and Italy. As a last, convincing argument, he gently hints that it is very easy for a student in Heidelberg to borrow money at 10 per cent. interest. He got the money and enjoyed his Swiss tour, mostly on foot and alone; but in Italy various misfortunes overtook him--he fell ill, his money ran out, and he was only too glad to return to Heidelberg in the same condition as when he had first arrived there, on which occasion the state of his purse compelled him to make the last part of the journey from Leipsic on foot.

On this trip he enjoyed that unique emotional thrill of the German, the first sight of the Rhine, with which he was so enchanted that he went to the extreme forward end of the deck, smoking a good cigar given him by an Englishman: "Thus I sat alone all the afternoon, revelling in the wild storm which ploughed through my hair, and composing a poem of praise to the Northeast wind"--for Schumann often indulged in poetic efforts, especially when inspired to flights of fancy by his favorite author, Jean Paul.

At Heidelberg, which he called "ein ganzes Paradies von Natur," he spent one of the happiest years of his life. Student life at this town he thus compares with Leipsic:

"In and near Heidelberg the student is the most prominent and respected individual, since it is he who supports the town, so that the citizens and Philistines are naturally excessively courteous. I consider it a disadvantage for a young man, especially for a student, to live in a town where the student only and solely rules and flourishes. Repression alone favors the free development of a youth, and the everlasting loafing with students greatly limits many-sidedness of thought, and consequently exerts a bad influence on practical life. This is one great advantage Leipsic has over Heidelberg--which, in fact, a large city always has over a small one.... On the other hand, Heidelberg has this advantage, that the grandeur and beauty of the natural scenery prevent the students from spending so much of their time in drinking; for which reason the students here are ten times more sober than in Leipsic."

Schumann himself, as we have said, was fond of a glass of good wine. On his first journey, at Prague, he tells us, the Tokay made him happy. And in another place he exclaims, "Every day I should like to drink champagne to excite myself." But, though of a solitary disposition, he did not care to drink alone, for "only in the intimate circle of sympathetic hearts does the vine's blood become transfused into our own and warm it to enthusiasm." Schumann's special vice was the constant smoking of very strong cigars; nor does he appear to have devoted to gastronomic matters the attention necessary to nourish such an abnormally active brain as his. At one time he lived on potatoes alone for several weeks; at another he saved on his meals to get money for French lessons; and although he took enough interest in a good _menu_ to copy it in a letter, he repeatedly laments the time which is uselessly wasted in eating. Such tenets, combined with his smoking habit, doubtless helped to shatter his powers, leading finally to the lunatic asylum and a comparatively early death.

His frequent fits of melancholy may also perhaps be traced in part to these early habits. Though probably unacquainted with Burton, he held that "there is in melancholy sentiments something extremely attractive and even invigorating to the imagination." Attempts were frequently made by his friends to teach him more sociable habits. Thus, at Leipsic, "Dr. Carus's family are anxious to introduce me to innumerable families--'it would be good for my prospects,' they think, and so do I, and yet I don't get there, and in fact seldom go out at all. Indeed, I am often very leathery, dry, disagreeable, and laugh much inwardly." That his apparent coldness and indifference to his neighbors and friends were due chiefly to his absorption in his world of ideas, and his consequent want of sympathy with the artificial usages of society, becomes apparent from this confession, written to Clara in 1838:

"I should like to confide to you many other things regarding my character--how people often wonder that I meet the warmest expressions of love with coldness and reserve, and often offend and humiliate precisely those who are most sincerely devoted to me. Often have I queried and reproached myself for this, for inwardly I acknowledge even the most trifling favor, understand every wink, every subtle trait in the heart of another, and yet I so often blunder in what I say and do."

In these melancholy moods nature was his refuge and consolation. He objected to Leipsic because there were no delights of nature--"everything artificially transformed; no valley, no mountain, where I might revel in my thoughts; no place where I can be alone, except in the bolted room, with the eternal noise and turmoil below." Although he had but a few intimate friends, he was liked by all the students, and even enjoyed the name of "a favorite of the Heidelberg public." One of his intimate friends was Flechsig, but even of him he paradoxically complains that he is too sympathetic: "He never cheers me up; if I am occasionally in a melancholy mood, he ought not to be the same, and he ought to have sufficient humanity to stir me up. That I often need cheering up, I know very well." Yet he was as often in a state of extreme happiness and enjoyment of life and his talents. He even, on occasion, indulged in students' pranks. On his journey to Heidelberg he induced the postilion to let him take the reins: "Thunder! how the horses ran, and how extravagantly happy I was, and how we stopped at every tavern to get fodder, and how I entertained the whole company, and how sorry they all were when I parted from them at Wiesbaden!!" At Frankfort, one morning, he writes: "I felt an extraordinary longing to play on a piano. So I calmly went to the nearest dealer, told him I was the tutor of a young English lord who wished to buy a grand piano, and then I played, to the wonder and delight of the bystanders, for three hours. I promised to return in two days and inform them if the lord wanted the instrument; but on that date I was at Rüdesheim, drinking Rüdesheimer." In another place he gives an account of "a scene worthy of Van Dyck, and a most genial evening" he spent with some students at a tavern filled with peasants. They had some grog, and at the request of the peasants one of the students declaimed, and Schumann played. Then a dance was arranged. "The peasants beat time with their feet. We were in high spirits, and danced dizzily among the peasant feet, and finally took a touching farewell of the company by giving all the peasant girls, Minchen, etc., smacking kisses on the lips."

Were women, like men, afflicted with retrospective jealousy, Schumann's widow, in editing these letters, would have received a pang from many other passages revealing Schumann's fondness for the fair sex. He allowed no good-looking woman to pass him on the street without taking the opportunity to cultivate his sense of beauty. After his engagement to Clara he gives her fair warning that he has the "very mischievous habit" of being a great admirer of beautiful women and girls. "They make me positively smirk, and I swim in panegyrics on your sex. Consequently, if at some future time we walk along the streets of Vienna and meet a beauty, and I exclaim, 'Oh, Clara! see this heavenly vision,' or something of the sort, you must not be alarmed nor scold me." He had a number of transient passions before he discovered that Clara was his only true love. There was Nanni, his "guardian angel," who saved him from the perils of the world and hovered before his vision like a saint. "I feel like kneeling before her and adoring her like a Madonna." But Nanni had a dangerous rival in Liddy. Not long, however, for he found Liddy silly, cold as marble, and--fatal defect--she could not sympathize with him regarding Jean Paul. "The exalted image of my ideal disappears when I think of the remarks she made about Jean Paul. Let the dead rest in peace."

Several of his flames are not alluded to in this correspondence. On his travels he appears to have had the habit of noting down in his diary the prevalence and peculiarities of feminine beauty. He complains that from Mainz to Heidelberg he "did not see a single pretty face." Yet, as a whole, the Rhine maidens seem to have won his admiration:

"What characteristic faces among the lowest classes! On the west shore of the Rhine the girls have very delicate features, indicating amiability rather than intelligence; the noses are mostly Greek, the face very oval and artistically symmetrical, the hair brown; I did not see a single blonde. The complexion is soft, delicate, with more white than red; melancholy rather than sanguine. The Frankfort girls, on the other hand, have in common a sisterly trait--the character of German, manly, sad earnestness which we often find in our quondam free cities, and which toward the east gradually merges into a gentle softness. Characteristic are the faces of all the Frankfort girls: intellectual or beautiful few of them; the noses mostly Greek, often snub-noses; the dialect I did not like."

The English type of beauty appears to have especially won his approval. "When she spoke it sounded like the whispering of angels," he says of an Englishwoman, "as pretty as a picture," whom he met. Elsewhere he says, laconically: "On the 24th I arrived at Mainz with the steamer, in company with twenty to thirty English men and women. Next day the number of English increased to fifty. If I ever marry, it must be an English woman." Some years later, however, with the fickleness of genius, he writes about Ernestine, the daughter of a rich Bohemian Baron, "a delightfully innocent, childish soul, tender and pensive, attached to me and to everything artistic by the most sincere love, extremely musical--in short, just the kind of a girl I could wish to marry." He did become engaged to her, but the following year the engagement was dissolved; and soon after this he discovered that his artistic admiration for Clara Wieck had assumed the form of love. Although her father opposed their union several years, on account of Schumann's poverty, the young couple often met, and not only in the music-room. In 1833 he writes to his mother regarding Clara: "The other day, when we went to Connewitz (we take a two or three hours' walk almost daily), I heard her say to herself, 'How happy I am! how happy!' Who would not like to hear that! On this road there are a number of very useless stones in the midst of the footpath. Now, as it happens in conversation that I more frequently look up than down, she always walks behind me and gently pulls my coat at every stone, lest I may fall."

It was most fortunate for Schumann that his bride and wife was one of the greatest living pianists. For, owing to the accident to his hand, though he could still improvise, he could not appear in public to interpret his own compositions, which depended so much for their success on a sympathetic performance, since they differed so greatly from the prevalent style of Hummel and the classical masters, that even so gifted a musician as Mendelssohn failed to understand them. But Clara made it the task of her life to secure him recognition, and this was an additional bond that united their souls. "When you are mine," he writes, "you will occasionally hear something new from me; I believe you will often inspire me, and the mere fact that I shall then frequently hear my own compositions will cheer me up;" and: "Your Romance showed me once more that we must become man and wife. Every one of your thoughts comes from my soul, even as I owe all my music to you." To Dorn he writes that many of his compositions, including the Noveletten, the Kreisleriana, and the Kinderscenen, were inspired by Clara; and it is well known that his love became the incentive to the composition, in one year, of over a hundred wonderful songs--his previous compositions, up to 1840, having all been for the piano alone. In the last letter of this collection he says: "Sometimes it appears to me as if I were treading entirely new paths in music;" and there are many other passages showing that he realized well that the very things which his contemporaries criticised and decried as eccentric and obscure (Hummel, _e.g._, objects to his frequent changes of harmony and his originality!), were really his most inspired efforts. Though he never allowed the desire for popularity to influence his work, yet he occasionally craves appreciation. "I am willing to confess that I should be greatly pleased if I could succeed in composing something which would impel the public, after hearing you play it, to run against the walls in their delight; for vain we composers are, even though we have no reason to be so." It must have given him a strange shock when an amateur asked him, at one of his wife's concerts in Vienna, if he also was musical!

In her efforts to win appreciation for her husband, Clara was nobly assisted by Liszt. Just like Wagner, Schumann was not at first very favorably impressed with Liszt, owing to the sensational flavor of his early performances. But he soon changed his mind, especially when Liszt played some of his (Schumann's) compositions. "Many things were different from my conception of them, but always '_genial_,' and marked by a tenderness and boldness of expression which even he presumably has not at his command every day. Becker was the only other person present, and he had tears in his eyes." And two days later: "But I must tell you that Liszt appears to me grander every day. This morning he again played at Raimund Härtel's, in a way to make us all tremble and rejoice, some études of Chopin, a number of the Rossini soirées, and other things." Of other contemporary pianists Hummel, "ten years behind the time," and Thalberg, whom he liked better as pianist than as composer, are alluded to. Yet he writes in 1830 that he intends going to Weimar, "for the sly reason of being able to _call myself_ a pupil of Hummel." Wieck, his father-in-law, he esteemed greatly as teacher and adviser, but it offended him deeply that Wieck should have followed the common error of estimating genius with a yard-stick, and asked where were his "Don Juan" and his "Freischütz?" His enthusiasm for Schubert, Chopin, and especially for Bach, finds frequent expression. Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavichord" he declares is his "grammar, and the best of all grammars. The fugues I have analyzed successively to the minutest details; the advantage resulting from this is great, and has a morally bracing effect on the whole system, for Bach was a man through and through; in him there is nothing done by halves, nothing morbid, but all is written for time eternal." Six years later: "Bach is my daily bread; from him I derive gratification and get new ideas--'compared with him we are all children,' Beethoven has said, I believe." One day a caller remarked that Bach was old and wrote in old-fashioned manner: "But I told him he was neither old nor new, but much more than that, namely, eternal. I came near losing my temper." Concerning the unappreciative Mendelssohn, he writes to Clara:

"I am told that he is not well disposed toward me. I should feel sorry if that were true, since I am conscious of having preserved noble sentiments toward him. If you know anything let me hear it on occasion; that will at least make me cautious, and I do not wish to squander anything where I am ill-spoken of. Concerning my relations toward him as a musician [1838], I am quite aware that I could learn of him for years; but he, too, some things of me. Brought up under similar circumstances, destined for music from childhood, I would surpass you all--that I feel from the energy of my inventive powers."

Concerning this energy he says, some time after this, when he had just finished a dozen songs: "Again I have composed so much that I am sometimes visited by a mysterious feeling. Alas! I cannot help it. I could wish to sing myself to death, like a nightingale."