Part 23

It is a fact, the bearing of which ought to be borne in mind while studying the significance of Weber in the development of music, that he did not enjoy the favor of the leading men amongst his contemporaries. The popularity of "Der Freischütz" always remained an enigma to Spohr, and Schubert could find nothing to admire in "Euryanthe." His want of skill in the handling of form, which in the early part of his career we are justified in attributing to insufficient study, was an offence which these men and the majority who were like-minded with them could not forgive. In his orchestral treatment, too, and his obvious leaning toward dramatic and spectacular effectiveness, they could only perceive what is now termed sensationalism. The old notions of the relationship between music and poetry were still almost universally valid. Beauty had not come to be looked upon as a relative thing; it was believed that to be real it must appeal to all alike and that those of its elements which rested upon individual or national predilections were false in art. Characteristic beauty was an unknown quantity. Weber's definition of an opera when it was put forth sounded in the ears of his contemporaries like a heresy the realization of which would mean the destruction of operatic music. We are become familiar enough with it since Wagner achieved his reform, and therefore can scarcely appreciate how revolutionary it must have sounded three-quarters of a century ago. The opera, said Weber, is "an art work complete in itself, in which all the parts and contributions of the related and utilized arts meet and disappear in each other, and, in a manner, form a new world by their own destruction." A society in Breslau applied to Weber for permission to perform "Euryanthe" in concert style. Weber denied the request with the memorable words: "'Euryanthe' is a purely dramatic attempt which rests for its effectiveness upon the coöperation of all the sister arts, and will surely fail if robbed of their help." To these two definitions let us add two others touching singing and form: "It is the first and most sacred duty of song to be truthful with the utmost fidelity possible in declamation"; "All striving for the beautiful and the new good is praiseworthy; but the creation of a new form must be generated by the poem which is setting." Here we find stated in the plainest and most succinct terms the foundation principles of the modern lyric drama. It may be urged that Weber did not pursue his convictions to their extremity as Wagner did, but returned in "Oberon" to the simpler operatic style; but this, we are convinced, was partly because of the intellectual and physical lassitude due to the consumption of his vital forces, and partly because of his wish to adapt himself to the customs of the English stage and the taste of the people for whom he composed his fairy opera. This is obvious not only from his letters to Planché, the librettist of "Oberon," but from his subsequent effort to remodel the opera to suit his own ideas "so that 'Oberon' may deserve the name of opera." On February 16, 1825, he wrote: "These two acts are also filled with the greatest beauties. I embrace the whole in love, and will endeavor not to remain behind you. To this acknowledgment of your work you can give credit, the more as I must repeat, that the cut of the whole is very foreign to all my ideas and maxims. The intermixing of so many principal actors who do not sing, the omission of the music in the most important moments--all these things deprive our 'Oberon' of the title of an opera, and will make him unfit for all other theatres in Europe, which is a very bad thing for me, but _passons là dessus_." His adherence to the belief in the necessity of an intimate and affectionate relation between poetry and music, moreover, has beautiful assertion in the concluding words of the same letter: "Poets and composers live together in a sort of angels' marriage which demands a reciprocal trust."

It is the manner in which he has wedded the drama with music which makes "Euryanthe" a work that, at times, seems almost ineffable. There is no groping in the dark such as might have been expected in the case of a pathfinder. Weber is pointing the way to thitherto undreamed-of possibilities and means, yet his hand is steady, his judgment all but unerring. The eloquence and power of the orchestra as an expositor of the innermost sentiments of the drama are known to him. Witness his use of the band in the _largo_ episode of the overture, designed to accompany a picture which Weber wished to have disclosed during the music for the purpose of giving coherency and intelligibility to the hopelessly defective book of the opera. Witness the puissance of the orchestra again in _Lysiart's_ great air, "Wo berg ich mich?" _Euryanthe's_ recital of the secret, _Eglantine's_ distraught confession, and more strikingly than anywhere else in the wondrously pathetic scene following _Adolar's_ desertion, and the instrumental introduction in the third act in which is to be found the germ of one of Wagner's most telling devices in "Tristan" and "Siegfried." Witness also how brilliantly its colors second the joyous, sweeping strains which publish the glories of mediæval chivalry. Will it ever be possible to put loftier sentiment and sincerer expression into a delineation of brave knighthood and its homage to fair woman than inspire every measure of the first act? Whither could we turn for more powerful expression of individual character through the means of musical declamation than we find in the music of _Euryanthe_ and _Eglantine_? To Wagner's honor it must be said that he never denied his indebtedness to Weber, but if he had it would have availed him nothing while the representatives of the evil principle in "Euryanthe" and "Lohengrin" present so obvious a parallel, not to mention Wagner's drafts upon what may be called the external apparatus of Weber's score. Somewhat labored at times, and weighted with the fruits of reflection, the music unquestionably is, but for each evidence of intellectual straining discernible how many instances of highly emotionalized music, real, true, expressive music, present themselves to charm the hearer, and with what a delightful shock of surprise is not the discovery made that the old-fashioned roulades, when they come (which they do with as much naïveté as in Mozart) have been infused with a dramatic potency equalled only by Mozart in some of his happiest inspirations? Of finest gold is the score of "Euryanthe." That it is come so tardily into its estate, and that even to-day it is still underestimated and misunderstood, is the fault of its libretto. Dr. Spitta has gallantly broken a lance in defence of the book, but no amount of ingenious argumentation can justify the absurd complication created by the prudery of a German blue-stocking to avoid Shakespeare's simple expedient, the "mole, cinque-spotted." After all has been said and done in defence of the book, the fact remains that it is the attitude of the hero and heroine of the play to a mystery which is wholly outside the action and cannot be brought within the sympathetic cognizance of the spectators, that supplies the motive to the conduct of _Adolar_ and _Euryanthe_.

The device of introducing the _largo_ episode in the overture of "Euryanthe" to accompany a tableau temporarily disclosed by the withdrawal of the curtain, the tableau having a bearing on the ghostly part of the dramatic tale, may be said to serve not only to prove Weber's appreciation of the fundamental defect of the book, but also to indicate his anxiety to establish a more intimate relationship between the instrumental introduction and the drama. The choral "Ave Maria" in the overture to Meyerbeer's "Dinorah" and the Siciliano in the prelude to Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana" are but variations of Weber's futile invention. It would be unavailing to deny that the want of symphonic development in Weber's overtures, the circumstance that they are little else than potpourris of melodies idealized in a manner by the splendor of their instrumentation, prevents them from aspiring to the dramatic dignity and significance of such overtures as Mozart wrote for "Don Giovanni" and Beethoven for "Fidelio." As a creative composer Weber was first of all a melodist, secondarily a colorist. His want of constructive skill was held up as a reproach to him by his colleagues all through his career. It is not to make a plea in behalf of lawlessness to say that this deficiency in Weber's artistic equipment was less detrimental to his works and influence than a deficiency in any other department would have been. Not a destruction of form but an extension of forms, an adaptation of the vessel to its new contents, was a necessary consequence of the introduction of the Romantic spirit as a dominant element in music. The Romanticism of the poets who inspired the musical Romanticists, consisted not only in their effort to overthrow the stilted rhetoric and pedantry of the German writers who were following stereotyped French models, but also in their effort to disclose the essential beauty which pervades the world of mystery beyond the plain realities of this life. They found the elements of their creations in the imaginative literature of the Middle Ages,--the marvellous and fantastic stories of chivalry and superstition. A man like Schumann touches hands with these poets in all of their strivings. His music rebels against the formalism which had assumed despotic dominion over the art, and also expresses the thousand and one emotions to which that formalism refused adequate expression. Weber's art was so deeply rooted in that of the last century that he could not place himself wholly upon this level. His violations of conventional forms are less the fruit of necessity than the product of incapacity. His Romanticism, except that phase which we have already discussed in connection with his patriotic lyrics, had more of an external nature and genesis--it sprang from the subjects of his operas. The treatment of these subjects by an instinctively truthful musical dramatist was bound to produce the features in which that which is chiefly characteristic in Weber's music is found. The supernaturalism of "Der Freischütz" and "Oberon," the chivalresque sentiment of "Euryanthe" and the national tinge of "Preciosa," all made new demands upon music so soon as the latter came to be looked upon as only one vehicle of dramatic expression instead of the chief business of the piece. The musical investiture of necessity borrowed local elements from the subject. Without losing its prerogative as an expounder of the innermost feelings of the drama it acquired a decorative capacity so far as the externals of the play were concerned. Music became frankly delineative. Whatever may be thought of descriptive music in connection with the absolute forms of the art there can be no question as to its justification in the lyric drama where text, action and scenery are so many programmes, or guides to the purposes of the composer and the fancy of the listener. The more material kind of delineation, that which helped to heighten the effect of the stage pictures, to paint the terrors of the Wolf's Glen with its infernal rout as well as the dewy freshness of the forest and the dainty grace of the tripping elves, was paired with another kind far more subtle. The people of the play, like their prototypes in the mediæval romances, ceased to be representatives of universal types, and became instead individuals who borrowed physiognomy from time, environment and race. To give expression to the attributes thus acquired it became necessary to study the characteristics of those popular publications of emotion which had remained outside the artificial forms of expression. The voice of the German people with their love for companionship, the chase and nature, and their instinctive devotion to the things which have survived as relics of a time when their racial traits were fixed in them, Weber caught up from the Folk-song, which ever and anon in the history of art, when music has threatened to degenerate into inelastic formalism, has breathed into it the breath of life. For the delineation of spiritual characteristics Weber utilized the melodic and rhythmic elements of the people's self-created popular songs; for material delineation his most potent agency was instrumentation. To the band he gave a share in the representation such as only Beethoven, Mozart and Gluck before him had dreamed of. The most striking feature of his treatment of the orchestra is his emancipation of the wood-wind choir. His numerous discoveries in the domain of effects consequent on his profound study of instrumental _timbre_ placed colors upon the palettes of every one of his successors. The supernatural voices of his Wolf's Glen scene are echoed in Verdi as well as in Meyerbeer and Marschner. The fairy footsteps of Oberon's dainty folk are heard not only in Mendelssohn but in all the compositions since his time in which the amiable creatures of supernaturalism are sought to be delineated. The reform, not only in composition, but also in representation achieved by Richard Wagner is an artistic legacy from Carl Maria von Weber. It is but the interest upon the five talents given into the hands of a faithful servant who buried them not in the ground but traded with them "and made them other five talents."

Fac-simile of full score of the beginning of Agatha's great aria, from "Der Freischütz."]

HEINRICH MARSCHNER

It is a little less than a generation since Heinrich Marschner died after having for the same time been one of the most picturesque and significant figures in the art-life of Hanover. For twenty-eight years he had been Royal Chapelmaster with salary and duties; for two years thereafter General Director of Music with a pension. Affecting a custom common among the men of learning in Germany and the academic musicians of Great Britain, he prefixed the title of his honorary university degree to his signature. He was Dr. H. Marschner. On court occasions he could bedizen his breast with baubles enough to make a brave show amongst the civil and military servants of his Hanoverian Majesty King George V. He was Knight of the Order of the Saxon-Ernestine House; Knight of the Guelphic Order; Knight of the Order of Danebrog; possessor of the Bavarian and Austrian medals for Merit in Art and Science. He was also Honorary Citizen of Hanover. He died suddenly of apoplexy at the age of sixty-six, before his capacity for work had become seriously impaired; his mind was occupied with a new opera when death overtook him. In his day and generation he was one of the most admired of Germany's opera writers. He lived to see nearly all of the colleagues and rivals of his prime die and their creations fade out of public memory. Lindpaintner, Dorn, and Reissiger are names that come to our ears like faint echoes of once-living voices. Kreutzer and Lortzing wake at long intervals in sporadic performances in small or provincial theatres. Marschner is in a more fortunate case, for his was greater genius. Three of his operas still have a considerable degree of vitality, and some of his stirring part-songs for men's voices are yet sung and heard with delight. But only in Germany. Dust lies deep upon his pianoforte and chamber music wherever it is. Yet it is less than a generation since he died. Day by day it becomes more difficult to assign him the place to which he is entitled in the Temple of Fame, for he wrote for but one people and his memory is perishing even amongst them.

The birth-place of Heinrich Marschner was Zittau in Saxony. He was born August 16, 1795 and imbibed his love for music as most German boys of good family imbibe theirs. His father was fond of the art and it was industriously practised in the family. When the lad manifested an unusual degree of talent, the father, instead of becoming alarmed, encouraged its use, though he had no mind that his son should become a musician. Karl Gottlieb Hering, an eminent musical pedagogue at the time a teacher in the town Seminary, was called in to be the lad's teacher. Meanwhile he pursued his other studies and in due time entered the Gymnasium where his musical gifts and lovely voice found occupation in the Gymnasial choir. At the solicitation of the music teacher in the Gymnasium at Bautzen he went thither for a space and sung the soprano solos in the Bautzen choir, but his voice changing he returned to his native town and there completed his lower studies. The political situation (it was in 1813 and Germany was preparing to rid herself of Napoleon) interfered with his father's wishes to have him proceed at once to Leipsic to take up the study of jurisprudence at the University. There was a brief respite which he spent in Prague until the suspension of the truce compelled him to leave the Bohemian Capital. He returned to his home in Zittau for a short time, then proceeded to Leipsic and was there a witness of the great three-days' battle. The brief stay in Prague had helped to keep the artistic fires burning on the altar of his heart, for there he became acquainted with Johann Wenzel Tomaschek, the Bohemian composer and teacher. Marschner was matriculated at the University so soon as the return of more peaceful times permitted the step to be taken, and began his study of the law. His experience, however, was like that of Schumann later. While trying to be faithful to his Corpus Juris, he found the fascinations of Dame Music stronger than his will. Some of his essays in composition were applauded and he resolved to become a musician instead of a lawyer. Schicht, one of Bach's successors in the position of Cantor of the Thomas School was now his teacher, and in 1815 he felt himself sufficiently strong as a pianoforte virtuoso to undertake a concert tour to Carlsbad. There he met the Hungarian Count Thaddeus von Amadée, who persuaded him to seek his fortune in Vienna. He went thither in 1816, made the acquaintance of Beethoven and, aided by the music-loving Count, was appointed to a position as teacher in Pressburg where three years later he married his first wife, Eugenie Jaggi, and completed the first of his operas which achieved the distinction of a representation. This opera was "Henry IV. and d'Aubigné" which he sent to Weber at Dresden in 1818. A year earlier he had set Kotzebue's "The Kyffhaus Mountain." The title of this, his first opera, indicates that his mind was from the beginning turned toward the legendary materials which afterward became the inspiration of the Neo-Romantic school. It is possible, too, that this predisposition toward the supernatural was strengthened by an incident which has been related by Louis Köhler in connection with the first representation of "Henry IV. and d'Aubigné." This story is to the effect that one night in 1819 Marschner, living far from Dresden (the year must have been 1820, the place Pressburg) dreamed that he was witnessing a performance of his opera. The applause so excited him that he awoke and sprang from his bed. Ten days later he received a letter from Weber enclosing ten ducats honorarium and conveying the intelligence that on the night of the dream "Henry IV. and d'Aubigné" had been produced at Dresden with great success. As has already been indicated in one respect the credibility of the story suffers somewhat from analysis of its details. The fact that he dreamed of a performance of his opera and the possibility of the influence of the dream upon his mind need not be disputed. It is extremely improbable, however, that he was ignorant of the date set for the performance as is implied in the story, for on July 7, 1820, twelve days before the first representation, Weber, in continuance of the friendly policy which he adopted five years before in order to introduce Meyerbeer to Prague, published a description of the opera in the _Abendzeitung_ of Dresden. It seems to be beyond question, however, that Weber produced the opera chiefly to encourage the young composer.

After spending over five years in Pressburg, Marschner visited Saxony to look after some family affairs. The kindness with which Councillor von Könneritz, Theatrical Intendant, and Weber received him, determined him to remove to Dresden. His wife had died soon after marriage. He now took up a residence in the Saxon Capital, and after he had composed incidental music for Kleist's drama, "Prince Frederick of Homburg," he was by royal rescript, dated September 4, 1824, appointed Royal Music Director of the German and Italian Opera, becoming thus an associate of Weber, whose friendship manifested itself daily in the most helpful manner.

Marschner's "Henry IV." was brought out by Weber in the year which gave "Der Freischütz" to the world. It was followed by "Saidar," words by Dr. Hornbostel, composed in 1819, "The Wood Thief," words by Kind, the poet of "Der Freischütz," and "Lucretia," words by Ehschlagen. "Saidar" was performed without success in Strassburg, "The Wood Thief" in January, 1825, in Dresden, and "Lucretia" in 1826 in Dantsic under Marschner's direction. Weber's death in London on June 5, 1826, marked a turning-point in the energetic young composer's career. Failing in the appointment to the post made vacant by Weber's death, he severed his connection with the Dresden Theatre, married a singer named Marianne Wohlbrück on July 3, and a few months later removed to Leipsic.

His second marriage was celebrated at Magdeburg. A brother of the bride was Wilhelm A. Wohlbrück, to whom Marschner submitted the subject of "The Vampire" before he returned to Leipsic. Two years afterwards the opera had its first representation. Its immediate success, and possibly his newly attained domestic happiness, were a mighty spur to his industry and fancy. "The Templer and the Jewess," founded on Scott's "Ivanhoe," followed in 1829, and "The Falconer's Bride" in 1830, Wohlbrück being the poet in both cases. The triumph of "The Vampire" was eclipsed by that of "The Templar and the Jewess," whose chivalresque subject was naturally much more amiable than the gruesome story of "The Vampire." Marschner's attention was drawn to Scott's "Ivanhoe" when, having been invited like Weber to compose an opera for London, he imitated Weber's example and prepared himself for the work by learning English. "The Vampire," translated by Planché, the librettist of "Oberon," had been well received in London, though Planché took the liberty of changing the scene from Scotland, where the author of the story had placed it, to Hungary. Nothing came of the London invitation, because of the burning of the Covent Garden Theatre.