Chapter 19

On his return to Weimar he accepted the post of Capellmeister to the Grand Duke. It provided him with that settled abode, and above all with an orchestra, which he now felt so indispensable to meet his growing passion for orchestral composition. But the time of rest had not yet come.

In 1844 and 1845 he was received in Spain and Portugal with incredible enthusiasm, after which he returned to Bonn to assist at the inauguration of Beethoven's statue. With boundless liberality, he had subscribed more money than all the princes and people of Germany put together, to make the statue worthy of the occasion and the occasion worthy of the statue.

The golden river which poured into him from all the capitals of Europe now freely found a new vent in boundless generosity. Hospitals, poor and needy, patriotic celebrations, the dignity and interests of art, were all subsidized from his private purse. His transcendent virtuosity was only equalled by his splendid munificence; but he found--what others have so often experienced--that great personal gifts and prodigious _éclat_ cannot possibly escape the poison of envy and detraction. He was attacked by calumny; his gifts denied and ridiculed; his munificence ascribed to vainglory, and his charity to pride and ostentation; yet none will ever know the extent of his private charities, and no one who knows anything of Liszt can be ignorant of the simple, unaffected goodness of heart which prompted them.

Still he was wounded by ingratitude and abuse. It seemed to check and paralyze for the moment his generous nature. Fétis saw him at Coblenz soon after the Bonn festival, at which he had expended such vast sums. He was sitting alone, dejected and out of health. He said he was sick of everything, tired of life, and nearly ruined. But that mood never lasted long with Liszt; he soon arose and shook himself like a lion. His detractors slunk away into their holes, and he walked forth victorious to refill his empty purse and reap new laurels.

His career was interrupted by the stormy events of 1848. He settled down for a time at Weimar, and it was then that he began to take that warm interest in Richard Wagner which ended in the closest and most enduring of friendships.

He labored incessantly to get a hearing for the "Lohengrin" and "Tannhäuser." He forced Wagner's compositions on the band, on the grand-duke; he breasted public opposition and fought nobly for the eccentric and obscure person who was chiefly known as a political outlaw and an inventor of extravagant compositions which it was impossible to play or sing, and odiously unpleasant to listen to. But years of faithful service, mainly the service and immense _prestige_ and authority of Liszt, procured Wagner a hearing, and paved the way for his glorious triumphs at Bayreuth in 1876, 1882, and 1883.

I have preferred to confine myself in this article to the personality of Liszt, and have made no allusion to his orchestral works and oratorio compositions. The "Symphonic Poems" speak for themselves--magnificent renderings of the inner life of spontaneous emotion--but subject-matter which calls for a special article can find no place at the fag-end of this, and at all times it is better to hear music than to describe it. As it would be impossible to describe Liszt's orchestration intelligibly to those who have not heard it, and unnecessary to those who have, I will simply leave it alone.

I saw Liszt but six times, and then only between the years 1876 and 1881. I heard him play upon two occasions only, and then he played certain pieces of Chopin at my request and a new composition by himself. I have heard Mme Schumann, Bülow, Rubenstein, Menter, and Esipoff, but I can understand that saying of Tausig, himself one of the greatest masters of _technique_ whom Germany has ever produced: "No mortal can measure himself with Liszt. He dwells alone upon a solitary height."

RICHARD WAGNER

By FRANKLIN PETERSON, Mus. Bac.

(1813-1883)

Richard Wagner's personality has been so overshadowed by and almost merged in the great controversy which his schemes of reform in opera raised, that his life and character are often now sorely misjudged--just as his music long was--by those who have not the time, the inclination, or the ability to understand the facts and the issues. Before briefly stating then the theories he propounded and their development, as shown in successive music dramas, it will be well to summarize the story of a life (1813-83) during which he was called to endure so much vicissitude, trial and temptation, suffering and defeat.

Born in Leipsic, on May 22, 1813, the youngest of nine children, Wilhelm Richard was only five months old when his father died. His mother's second marriage entailed a removal to Dresden, where, at the Kreuzschule, young Wagner received an excellent liberal education. At the age of thirteen the bent of his taste, as well as his diligence, was shown by his translation (out of school hours) of the first twelve books of the "Odyssey." In the following year his passion for poetry found expression in a grand tragedy. "It was a mixture," he says, "of Hamlet and Lear. Forty-two persons died in the course of the play, and, for want of more characters, I had to make some of them reappear as ghosts in the last act." Weber, who was then conductor of the Dresden opera, seems to have attracted the boy both by his personality and by his music; but it was Beethoven's music which gave him his real inspiration. From 1830 to 1833 many compositions after standard models are evidence of hard and systematic work and in 1833 he began his long career as an operatic composer with "Die Feen" which, however, never reached the dignity of performance till 1888--five years after Wagner's death. After some time spent in very unremunerative routine work in Heidelberg, Königsberg, and Riga (where in 1836 he married), he resolved, in 1839, to try his fortune in Paris with "Rienzi," a new opera, written on the lines of the Paris Grand Opera and with all its great resources in view. From the month's terrific storm in the North Sea, through which the vessel struggled to its haven, till the spring of 1842, when Wagner left Paris with "Rienzi" unperformed, heartsick with hope deferred, his lot was a hard and bitter one. Berlioz, in similar straits, supported himself by singing in the chorus of a second-rate theatre. Wagner was refused even that humble post. In 1842 "Rienzi" was accepted at Dresden, and its signal success led to his appointment as Capellmeister there (January, 1843). In the following year the "Flying Dutchman" was not so enthusiastically received, but it has since easily distanced the earlier work in popular favor. The story was suggested to his mind during the stormy voyage from Riga; and it is a remarkable fact that the wonderful tone-picture of Norway's storm-beaten shore was painted by one who, till that voyage, had never set eyes on the sea. In 1845 his new opera, "Tannhäuser," proved at first a comparative failure. The subject, one which had been proposed to Weber in 1814, attracted Wagner while he was in Paris, and during his studies for the libretto he found also the first suggestions of "Lohengrin" and "Parsifal." The temporary failure of the opera led him to the consideration and self-examination which resulted in the elaborate exposition of his ideal (in "Opera and Drama," and many other essays). "I saw a single possibility before me," he writes, "to induce the public to understand and participate in my aims as an artist." "Lohengrin" was finished early in 1848, and also the poem of "Siegfried's Tod," the result of Wagner's studies in the old Nibelungen Lied; but a too warm sympathy with some of the aims of the revolutionary party (which reigned for two short days behind the street barricades in Dresden, May, 1849) rendered his absence from Saxony advisable, and a few days later news reached him in Weimar that a warrant was issued for his arrest. With a passport procured by Liszt he fled across the frontier, and for nearly twelve years the bitterness of exile was added to the hardships of poverty. It is this period which is mainly responsible for Wagner's polemical writings, so biting in their sarcasm, and often unfair in their attacks. He was a good hater; one of the most fiendish pamphlets in existence is the "Capitulation" (1871), in which Wagner, safe from poverty (thanks to the kindness of Liszt and the munificence of Ludwig II., of Bavaria), and nearing the summit of his ambition, but remembering only his misfortunes and his slights, gloated in public over the horrors which were making a hell of the fairest city on earth. There is excuse at least, if not justification, to be found for his attacks on Meyerbeer and others; there are considerations to be taken into account while one reads with humiliation and pity the correspondence between Wagner and his benefactor, Liszt; but it is sad that an affectionate, humane, intensely human, to say nothing of an artistic, nature, could so blaspheme against the first principles of humanity.

In 1852 the poem of the "Nibelungen Ring Trilogy" was finished. In 1854 "Rheingold" (the introduction of "Vorabend") was ready, and "Die Walküre" (Part I.) in 1856. But "tired," as he said, "of heaping one silent score upon another," he left "Siegfried" unfinished, and turned to the story of "Tristan." The poem was completed in 1857, and the music two years later. At last, in 1861, he received permission to return to Germany, and in Vienna he had the first opportunity of hearing his own "Lohengrin." For three years the struggle with fortune seems to have been harder than ever before, and Wagner, in broken health, had practically determined to give up the unequal contest, when an invitation was sent him by Ludwig II., the young King of Bavaria--"Come here and finish your work." Here at last was salvation for Wagner, and the rest of his life was comparatively smooth. In 1865 "Tristan und Isolde" was performed at Munich, and was followed three years later by a comic opera, "Die Meistersinger," the first sketches of which date from 1845. "Siegfried" ("Nibelungen Ring," Part II.) was completed in 1869, and in the following year Wagner married Cosima, the daughter of Liszt, and formerly the wife of Von Bülow. His first wife, from whom he had been separated in 1861, died at Dresden in 1866.

A theatre built somewhere off the main lines of traffic, and specially constructed for the performance of Wagner's later works, must have seemed the most impracticable and visionary of proposals in 1870; and yet, chiefly through the unwearying exertions of Carl Tausig (and, after his death, of the various Wagner societies), the foundation-stone of the Baireuth Theatre was laid in 1872, and in 1876, two years after the completion of the "Götterdämmerung" ("Nibelungen Ring," Part III.), it became an accomplished fact. The first work given was the entire "Trilogy;" and in July, 1882, Wagner's long and stormy career was magnificently crowned there by the first performance of "Parsifal." A few weeks later his health showed signs of giving way, and he resolved to spend the winter at Venice. There he died suddenly, February 13, 1883, and was buried in the garden of his own house, Wahnfried, at Baireuth.[12]

[Footnote 12: Our illustration represents him at Wahnfried in company with his wife Cosima, her father Franz Liszt, who was his lifelong friend, and Herr von Wolzogen.]

Wagner's life and his individuality are of unusual importance in rightly estimating his work, because, unlike the other great masters, he not only devoted all his genius to one branch of music--the opera--but he gradually evolved a theory and an ideal which he consciously formulated and adopted, and perseveringly followed. It may be asked whether Wagner's premises were sound and his conclusions right; and also whether his genius was great enough to be the worthy champion of a cause involving such revolutions. Unless Wagner's operas, considered solely as music, are not only more advanced in style, but worthy in themselves to stand at least on a level with the greatest efforts of his predecessors, no amount of proof that these were wrong and he right will give his name the place his admirers claim for it. It is now universally acknowledged that Wagner can only be compared with the greatest names in music. His instrumentation has the advantage in being the inheritor of the enormous development of the orchestra from Haydn to Berlioz, his harmony is as daring and original as Bach's, and his melody is as beautiful as it is different from Beethoven's or Mozart's. (These names are used not in order to institute profitless comparisons, but as convenient standards; therefore even a qualification of the statement will not invalidate the case.)

His aim (stated very generally) was to reform the whole structure of opera, using the last or "Beethoven" development of instrumental music as a basis, and freeing it from the fetters which conventionality had imposed, in the shape of set forms, accepted arrangements, and traditional concessions to a style of singing now happily almost extinct. The one canon was to be dramatic fitness. In this "Art Work of the Future," as he called it, the interest of the drama is to depend not entirely on the music, but also on the poem and on the acting and staging as well. It will be seen that Wagner's theory is not new. All or most of it is contained in the theories of Gluck and others, who at various periods in the development of opera consciously strove after an ideal music drama. But the times were not ripe, and therefore such music could not exert its proper influence. The twin arts of music and poetry, dissociated by the rapid advance of literature and the slow development of music, pursued their several paths alone. The attempt to reunite them in the end of the sixteenth century was futile, and only led to opera which never needed, and therefore did not employ, great poetry. In Germany music was developed along instrumental lines until the school arrived at its culmination in Beethoven; and when an opera composer stopped to think on the eternal verities, the result must always have been such a prophecy of Wagner's work as we find in Mozart's letters:

"_October, 1781._--Verse indeed is indispensable for music, but rhyme is bad in its very nature.... It would be by far the best if a good composer, understanding the theatre and knowing how to produce a piece, and a clever poet, could be united in one...."

Other but comparatively unimportant features in the Wagner music drama are, _e.g._, the use of the _Leitmotiv_, or leading motive--found occasionally in Gluck, Mozart, Weber, etc., but here first adopted with a definite purpose, and the contention for mythological rather than historical subjects--now largely admitted. But all Wagner's principles would have been useless without the energy and perseverance which directed his work, the loving study which stored his memory with all the great works of his predecessors, and, above all, the genius which commands the admiration of the musical world.

Wagner's works show a remarkable and progressive development. "Rienzi" is quite in the grand opera style of Meyerbeer, Spontini, etc. The "Flying Dutchman" is a deliberate departure from that style, and in romantic opera strikes out for itself a new line, which, followed still further in "Tannhäuser," reaches its stage of perfection in "Lohengrin." From this time dates the music drama, of which "Tristan" is the most uncompromising type, and by virtue of wonderful orchestration, and the intense pathos of the beautifully written poem, the most fascinating of all. The "Trilogy" ("Walküre," "Siegfried," "Götterdämmerung," with the "Rheingold" as introduction) is a very unequal work. It is full of Wagner's most inspired writing and most marvellous orchestration; but it is too long and too diffuse. The plot also is strangely confused and uninteresting, and fails alike as a story and as a vehicle of theories, morals, or religion. "Parsifal," with its sacred allegory, its lofty nobility of tone, and its pure mysticism, stands on a platform by itself, and is almost above criticism, or praise, or blame. The libretto alone might have won Wagner immortality, so original is it and perfect in intention; and the music seems to be no longer a mere accessory to the effect, but the very essence and fragrance of the great conception.

GIUSEPPE VERDI

(BORN 1813)

Giuseppe Verdi, the last and most widely successful of the school of Italian opera proper, was born at Roncole, near Busseto, October 9, 1813. At ten years he was organist of the small church in his native village, the salary being raised after a year from £1 8_s._ 10_d._ to £1 12_s._ per annum. At the age of sixteen he was provided with funds to prosecute his studies at the Conservatorium at Milan; but at the entrance examination he showed so little evidence of musical talent that the authorities declined to enroll him. Nothing daunted, he pursued his studies with ardor under Lavigna, from 1831 to 1833, when, according to agreement, he returned to Busseto to take the place of his old teacher Provesi, now deceased.

After five unhappy years in a town where he was little appreciated, Verdi returned to Milan. His first opera, "Oberto," is chiefly indebted to Bellini, and the next, "Un Giorno di Regno" (which fulfilled its own title, as it was only once performed), has been styled "Un Bazar de Reminiscences." Poor Verdi had just lost his wife and two children within a few days of each other, so it is hardly to be wondered at that a comic opera was not a very congenial work, nor successfully accomplished.

"Nabucodonosor" (1842) was his first hit, and in the next year "I Lombardi" was even more successful--partly owing to the revolutionary feeling which in no small degree was to help him to his future high position. Indeed, his name was a useful acrostic to the revolutionary party, who shouted "Viva Verdi," when they meant "Viva Vittorio Emanuele Re D' Italia." "Ernani," produced at Venice in 1844, also scored a success, owing to the republican sentiment in the libretto, which was adapted from Victor Hugo's "Hernani." Many works followed in quick succession, each arousing the enthusiasm of the audiences, chiefly when an opportunity was afforded them of expressing their feelings against the Austrian rule. Only with his sixteenth opera did Verdi win the supremacy when there were no longer any living competitors; and "Rigoletto" (1851), "Il Trovatore," and "La Traviata" (1853) must be called the best, as they are the last of the Italian opera school. "I Vespri Siciliani" (1855) and "Simon Boccanegra" (1857) were not so successful as "Un Ballo in Maschera" (1859); and none of them, any more than "La Forza del Destino" (1862) or "Don Carlos" (1867), added anything to the fame of the composer of "Il Trovatore."

Only now begins the interest which the student of musical history finds in Verdi's life. Hitherto he had proved a good man, struggling with adversity and poverty, a successful composer ambitious to succeed to the vacant throne of Italian opera. But the keen insight into dramatic necessity which had gradually developed and had given such force to otherwise unimportant scenes in earlier operas, also showed him the insufficiency of the means hitherto at the disposal of Italian composers, and from time to time he had tried to learn the lessons taught in the French Grand Opera School, but with poor success. Now a longer interval seemed to promise a more careful, a more ambitious work, and when "Aïda" was produced at Cairo (1871), it was at once acknowledged that a revolution had taken place in Verdi's mind and method, which might produce still greater results. The influence of Wagner and the music-drama is distinctly to be felt.

But Verdi was apparently not yet satisfied. For sixteen years the successful composer maintained absolute silence in opera, when whispers of a great music-drama roused the expectation of musical Europe to an extraordinary pitch; nor were the highest expectations disappointed when "Otello" was produced at Milan in 1887. The surrender of Italian opera was complete, and Verdi took his right place at the head of the vigorous new school which has arisen in Italy, and which promises to regain for the "Land of Song" some of her ancient preeminence in music. A comic opera by Verdi, "Falstaff," was announced in 1892: it has well sustained his previous reputation.

DRAMATIC AND LYRIC ARTISTS

DAVID GARRICK

By SAMUEL ARCHER

(1716-1779)

This celebrated actor was the son of Peter Garrick, who had a captain's commission in the army, but who generally resided at Lichfield. He was born at Hereford, when his father was on a recruiting party there, and was baptized in the Church of All-Saints, in that city, on February 20, 1716. Young Garrick received part of his education at the grammar school there, but he did not apply himself to his books with much assiduity. He had conceived a very early passion for theatrical representation, from which nothing could turn him aside. When he was a little more than eleven years of age, he formed the project of getting a play acted by young gentlemen and ladies. After he had made some trial of his own and his companions' abilities, and prevailed upon the parents to give their consent, he pitched upon the "Recruiting Officer," for the play. He assembled his little company in a large room, the destined place of representation. There we may suppose our young boy distributed the several characters according to the merits of the performer. He prevailed on one of his sisters to play the part of the chambermaid. Sergeant Kite, a character of busy intrigue and bold humor, he chose for himself.

The play was acted in a manner so far above the expectation of the audience, that it gave general satisfaction, and was much applauded. The ease, vivacity, and humor of Kite are still remembered with pleasure at Lichfield. The first stage attempt of our English Roscius was in 1727.

Not long after, he was invited to Lisbon by an uncle, who was a considerable wine merchant in that city, but his stay there was very short, for he returned to Lichfield the year following. It is imagined that the gay disposition of the young gentleman was not very suitable to the old man's temper, which was, perhaps, too grave and austere to relish the vivacities of his nephew.

However, during his short stay at Lisbon, young Garrick made himself agreeable to all who knew him, particularly to the English merchants who resided there, with whom he often dined. After dinner they usually diverted themselves by placing him upon the table, and calling upon him to repeat verses and speeches from plays, which he did with great readiness, and much to the satisfaction of the hearers. Some Portuguese young gentlemen of the highest rank, who were of his own age, were also much delighted with his conversation.

He afterward returned to Lichfield, and in 1737 came up to town in company with Samuel Johnson, who was to make so conspicuous a figure in the literary world, and of whose life we have already given an account.