CHAPTER XI

WAGNER AND WAGNERISM

Periods of operatic reform; Wagner’s early life and works--Paris: _Rienzi_, ‘The Flying Dutchman’--Dresden: _Tannhäuser_ and _Lohengrin_; Wagner and Liszt; the revolution of 1848--_Tristan_ and _Meistersinger_--Bayreuth; ‘The Nibelungen Ring’--_Parsifal_--Wagner’s musico-dramatic reforms; his harmonic revolution; the leit-motif system--The Wagnerian influence.

I

The student or reader of musical history will perceive that it is impossible to determine with any exactitude the dividing lines which mark the epochs of art evolution. Here and there may be fixed a sharper line of demarcation, but for the most part there is such a merging of phases and confusion of simultaneous movements that we are forced, in making any survey or general view of musical history, to measure approximately these boundaries. It may be, however, noted that, as in all other forms of human progress, the decisive and revolutionary advances have been made by those prophetic geniuses who, in single-handed struggle, have achieved the triumphs which a succeeding generation proclaimed. It is the names of these men that mark the real milestones of musical history and on that which marks the stretch of musical road we now travel stands large the name of Richard Wagner.

That we may the more readily appreciate Wagner’s place as the author of the ‘Music of the Future’ and the creator of the music drama, it is necessary to review briefly the course of musical history and particularly that of the opera as it led up to the time of Wagner’s birth at Leipzig, May 22, 1813. A glance at our chronological tables will show us that at the time Beethoven still lived and at the age of forty-three was creating those works so enigmatic to his contemporaries. Weber at the age of twenty-seven was, after the freedom of a gay youth, settling down to a serious career, seven years later to produce _Der Freischütz_. Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt, and Chopin were in their earliest infancy, while Schubert was but sixteen and Berlioz was ten. Thus may it be seen at a glance that Wagner’s life falls exactly into that epoch which we designate as ‘romantic,’ and to this same school we may correctly assign the works of Wagner’s earlier periods. But, as we of to-day view Wagner’s works as a whole, it is at once apparent that the label of ‘romanticist’ is entirely inadequate as descriptive of his place in musical history. We shall trace in this chapter the growth of his art and follow its development in some detail, but for the moment it will suffice us if we recognize the fact that Wagner arrested the stream of romantic thought at the point where it was in danger of running muddy with sentimentality, and turning into it the clearer waters of classic ideals, opening a stream of nobler breadth and depth than that which had been the channel of romanticism.

Wagner’s service to dramatic art was even larger, for the opera was certainly in greater danger of decay than absolute music. Twice had the opera been rescued from the degeneration that now again threatened it, and at the hands of Gluck and of Weber had been restored to artistic purity. Gluck, it will be remembered, after a period of imitation of the Italians, had grown discontent with the inadequacy of these forms and his genius had sought a more genuine dramatic utterance in returning to a chaster line of melody. He also adopted the recitative as it had been introduced into the earlier French operas, employed the chorus in a truly dramatic way, and, spurning the hitherto meaningless accompaniment, he had placed in the orchestra much of dramatic significance, thereby creating a musical background which was in many ways the real precursor of all that we know to-day as dramatic music.

Weber we have seen as the fountain head of the romantic school, and his supreme achievements, the operas, we find to be the embodiment of all that romanticism implies; a tenderness and intense imaginativeness coupled with a tragic element in which the supernatural abounds. Musically his contributions to dramatic art were a greater advance than that of any predecessor; melodically and harmonically his innovations were amazingly original and in his instrumentation we hear the first flashes of modern color and ‘realism’ in music.

It was on these two dramatic ideals--the classic purity and strength of Gluck and the glowing and mystic romanticism of Weber--that Wagner’s early genius fed. Wagner’s childhood was one which was well calculated to develop his genius. With an actor as stepfather, brothers and sisters all following stage careers, an uncle who fostered in him the love of poetry and letters, the early years of Richard were passed in an atmosphere well suited to his spiritual development. While evincing no early precocity in music, we find him, even in his earliest boyhood, possessed with the creative instinct. This first sought expression in poetry and tragic drama written in his school days, but following some superficial instruction in music and the hearing of many concerts and operas, he launched forth into musical composition, and throughout his youthful student days he persisted in these efforts at musical expression--composing overtures, symphonies, and sonatas, all of which were marked with an extravagance which sprang from a total lack of technical training. In the meantime, however, he was not disdaining the classic models, and he relates in his autobiography[107] his early enthusiasm for Weber’s _Freischütz_, for the symphonies of Beethoven, and certain of Mozart’s works. At the age of seventeen he succeeded in obtaining in Leipzig a performance of an orchestral overture and the disillusioning effect of this work must have had a sobering influence, for immediately after he began those studies which constituted his sole academic schooling. These consisted of several months’ training in counterpoint and composition under Theodor Weinlich, at that time musical director of the Thomaskirche. After these studies he proceeded with somewhat surer hand to produce shorter works for orchestra and a futile attempt at the text and music of an opera called _Die Hochzeit_. In 1833, however, Wagner, at twenty-one, completed his first stage work, _Die Feen_, and in the next year, while occupying his first conductor’s post at Magdeburg, he wrote a second opera, _Das Liebesverbot_. The first of these works did not obtain a hearing in Wagner’s lifetime, while the second one had one performance which proved a ‘fiasco’ and terminated Wagner’s career at Magdeburg. While these early works form an interesting historical document in showing the beginnings of Wagner’s art, there is in them nothing of sufficient individuality that can give them importance in musical history. The greatest interest they possess for us is the evidence which they bear of Wagner’s studies and models. Much of Weber, Mozart, and Beethoven, and--in the _Liebesverbot_, written at a time when routine opera conducting had somewhat lowered his ideal--much of Donizetti.

and the full development of its possibilities are exemplified in the sensuous weavings of ‘Tristan’:

The second type of harmonic formula is one in which remotely related triads follow each other in chromatic order with an enharmonic relationship. The following passage from _Lohengrin_ is an early example of this type:

and its ultimate development may be seen in the following passage from the _Walküre_:

The latter passage contains (at *) another striking feature of Wagner’s harmonic scheme, namely the strong and biting chromatic suspensions which fell on the ears of his generation with much the same effect as must have had those earlier suspensions on the age of Monteverdi. Wagner’s scores are replete with the most varied and beautiful examples of these moments of harmonic strife. In these three features, together with an exceedingly varied use of the chord of the ninth, lie many of the principles upon which Wagner built his harmonic scheme, though it would be folly to assert that any such superficial survey could give an adequate conception of a system that was so varied in its idiom and so intricate in its processes. It must be added that, although, as we have stated, chromaticism was the salient feature of Wagner’s harmony, his fine sense of balance and contrast prevented him from employing harmonies heavily scented to a point of stifling thickness; he interspersed them wisely with a strong vein of diatonic solidity, the materials of which he handled with the mastery of Beethoven. We have already cited the diatonic purity of certain of the _Parsifal_ motives and we need only remind the reader of the leading _Meistersinger_ themes as a further proof of Wagner’s solid sense of tonality.

In rhythmical structure Wagner’s music possesses its most conventional feature. We find little of the skillful juggling of motive and phrase which was Beethoven’s and which Brahms employed with such bewildering mastery. Wagner in his earliest work uses a particularly straightforward rhythmical formula; common time is most prevalent and the phrases are simple in their rhythmical structure, an occasional syncopation being the only deviation from a regular following of the beat and its equal divisions. The rhythmical development of his later style is also comparatively simple in its following; rhythmical excitement is largely in the restless figuration which the strings weave round the harmonic body. These figures are usually well defined groups of the regular beat divisions with an occasional syncopation and no disturbance of the regular pulse of the measure. An examination of the violin parts of ‘Tristan’ or the _Meistersinger_ will reveal the gamut of Wagner’s rhythmical sense. Summing up we may say that Wagner’s methods, radical as they appear, are built on the solid foundation of his predecessors and, now that in our view of his art we are able to employ some sense of perspective, we may readily perceive it to assume naturally its place as a step after Beethoven and Schubert in harmonic development.

It is with hypnotic power that these methods and their effects have possessed the musical consciousness of the succeeding generation and, becoming the very essence of modernity, insinuated themselves into the pages of all modern music. The one other personality in modern German music that assumes any proportions beside the overshadowing figure of the Bayreuth master is Johannes Brahms. As it would seem necessary for the detractors of any cause or movement to find an opposing force that they may pit against the object of their disfavor, so did the anti-Wagnerites, headed by Hanslick,[114] gather round the unconcerned Brahms with their war-cries against Wagner. Much time and patience have been lost over the Brahms-Wagner controversy and surely to no end. So opposed are the ideals and methods of these two leaders of modern musical thought that comparisons become indeed stupidly odious. To the reflective classicist of intellectual proclivities Brahms will remain the model, while Wagner rests, on the other hand, the guide of those beguiled by sensuous color and dramatic freedom. That the two are not irreconcilable in the same mind may be seen in the fact that Richard Strauss showed a strong Brahms influence in his earlier works, and then, without total reincarnation, became a close follower of Wagner, whose style has formed the basis on which the most representative living German has built his imposing structures. It is, indeed, Richard Strauss who has shown us the further possibilities of the Wagner idiom. Though he has been guided by Liszt in certain externals of form and design, the polyphonic orchestral texture and harmonic richness of Strauss’ later style, individual as they are, remain the distinct derivative of Richard Wagner’s art. The failure of Strauss in his first opera, _Guntram_, may be attributed to the dangerous experiment of which we have spoken--that of a too servile emulation of Wagner’s methods. In attempting to create his own libretto and in following too closely the lines of Wagner, he there became little more than a mere imitator, a charge which, however, cannot be brought against him as the composer of _Salomé_ and _Rosenkavalier_.

In Humperdinck’s _Hänsel und Gretel_ we find perhaps the next most prominent manifestation of the Wagnerian influence. Humperdinck met Wagner during the master’s last years and was one of those who assisted at the first _Parsifal_ performances. While his indebtedness to Wagner for harmonic, melodic, and orchestral treatment is great, Humperdinck has, by the employment of the naïve materials of folk-song, infused a strong and freshly individual spirit into this charming work, which by its fairy-tale subject became the prototype of a considerable following of fairy operas.

To complete the catalogue of German operatic composers who are followers of Wagner would be to make it inclusive of every name and work that has attained any place in the operatic repertoire of modern times.

In no less degree is his despotic hand felt in the realm of absolute music. It was through the concert stage that Wagner won much of his first recognition and it followed naturally that symphonic music must soon have felt the influence of his genius. Anton Bruckner was an early convert and, as a confessed disciple, attempted to demonstrate in his symphonies how the dramatic warmth of Wagner’s style could be confined within the symphony’s restricting line; a step which opened up to those who did not follow Brahms and the classic romanticists a path which has since been well trodden.

Outside of Germany the spread of Wagner’s works and the progress of his influence forms an interesting chapter in history. We have seen Wagner resident in Paris at several periods of his life; on the occasion of his first two French sojourns his acquaintance was largely with the older men, such as Berlioz, Halévy, Auber, and others, but during his final stay in Paris, in 1861, Wagner came into contact with some of the younger generation, Saint-Saëns and Gounod among others. It was perhaps natural in a France, which still looked to Germany for its musical education, that these two youthful and enthusiastic composers should champion the cause of Wagner and become imbued with his influence, an influence which showed itself strongly in their subsequent work. While neither of these men made any attempt at remodelling the operatic form after Wagner’s ideas, their music soon showed his influence, though denied by them as it was on several occasions. More open in his discipleship of Wagner and a too close imitator of his methods was Ernest Reyer, whose _Sigurd_ comes from the same source as Wagner’s ‘Ring’--the Nibelungen myths. Bizet is often unjustly accused of Wagnerian tendencies; though he was undoubtedly an earnest student and admirer of Wagner’s works and has, in _Carmen_, made some slight use of a leading motive system, his music, in its strongly national flavor, has remained peculiarly free from Wagner’s influence. Massenet, on the other hand, with his less vital style, has in several instances succumbed to Wagner’s influence, and in _Esclarmonde_ there occurs a motive so like one of the _Meistersinger_ motives that on the production of the work Massenet was called by a critic ‘Mlle. Wagner.’ Stronger still becomes the Wagner vein in French music as we come down to our own day. Charpentier’s ‘Louise,’ despite its distinctive color and feeling, leans very heavily on Wagner in its harmonic and orchestral treatment. As a reactionary influence against this encroaching tide of Wagnerism was the quiet rise of the new nationalistic French school which César Franck was evolving through his sober post-Beethoven classicism. That Franck himself was an admirer of Wagner we learn from Vincent d’Indy,[115] who tells us that it was the habit of his master to place himself in the mood for composition by starting his working hours in playing with great enthusiasm the prelude of _Die Meistersinger_. César Franck numbered among his pupils a great many of those who to-day form the circle of representative French composers. These writers all show the forming hand of their master and faithfully follow in his efforts to preserve a noble, national art. There has, however, crept into many of their pages the haunting and unmistakable voice of the Bayreuth master. Vincent d’Indy, one of the early champions of Wagner and one who, with the two conductors, Lamoureux and Colonne, did much to win a place for Wagner’s music in both opera house and concert room of Paris, is strongly Wagnerian in many of his moments and the failure of his dramatic work is generally attributed to his over-zealous following of Wagner. The strongest check to Wagnerism in France and elsewhere is the new France that asserts itself in the voice of him whom many claim to be the first original thinker in music since Wagner--Claude Debussy. The founder of French impressionism, himself at one time an ardent Wagnerite, tells us that his awakening appreciation of the charm of Russian music turned him from following in Wagner’s step. Whatever may have been its source the distinctive and insinuatingly contagious style of Debussy has undoubtedly been the first potent influence toward a reaction against Wagnerism.

A brief word may be added as to the Wagner influence as we find it in the other European nations. Of conspicuous names those of Grieg and Tschaikowsky fall easily into our list of Wagner followers. Undeniably national and individual as both have been, each had his Wagner enthusiasm. Into the works of the former there crept so much of Wagner that Hanslick wittily called him ‘Wagner in sealskins,’ while Tschaikowsky, continually sounding his anti-Wagnerian sentiments, is at times an unconscious imitator. From England there has come in recent years in the work of one whom Strauss called ‘the first English progressive,’ Edward Elgar, a voice which in its most eloquent moments echoes that of Wagner. But perhaps the most significant proof of the far-reaching influence of Wagner’s art is the readiness with which it was welcomed by Italy. As early as 1869 Wagner found his first Italian champion in Boïto and to him was due the early production of Wagner’s works at Bologna. Wagner’s influence on Italian composers has been largely in the respect of dramatic reform rather than actual musical expression; the accusations of Wagnerism which greeted the appearance of Verdi’s _Aïda_ were as groundless as the same cry against _Carmen_. In _Aïda_ Verdi forsook the superficial form of opera text that had been that of his earlier works and adopted a form more sincerely dramatic. This was, of course, under the direct influence of Wagner’s reform as was the more serious vein of the musical setting to this and Verdi’s two last operas, ‘Othello’ and ‘Falstaff’; but in musical idiom Verdi remained distinctively free from Wagner’s influence.

With this brief survey in mind the deduction as to the lasting value of Wagner’s theories and practices may be easily drawn. Wagner, the composer, has set his indelible mark upon the dramatic music of his age and that of a succeeding age, and, becoming a classic, he remains the inevitable model of modern musical thought. Wagner as dramatist constitutes a somewhat less forceful influence. Despite the inestimable value of his dramatic reform and its widespread influence on operatic art Wagner’s music dramas must remain the unique work of their author and so peculiarly the product of his universal genius that general imitation of them is at once prohibited by the fact that the world will not soon again see a man thus generously endowed.

Added proof of the enormous interest which has attached itself to Wagner and his works is found in the large and constantly increasing mass of Wagner literature, more voluminous than that heretofore devoted to any musician. The ten volumes which comprise Wagner’s own collected writings,[116] contain much of vital interest, as well as a mass of unimportant items. Besides the poems of the operas, beginning with _Rienzi_, we find all of those essays to which reference has been already made, in which he advances his æsthetic and philosophic principles. There is besides these a quantity of exceedingly interesting autobiographical and reminiscent articles and many valuable pages of hints as to the interpretation of his own and of other works. Of greater interest to the general reader is the two-volume autobiography.[117] This work covers Wagner’s life from childhood to the year 1864, the year in which he met King Ludwig. Dictated to his wife and left in trust to her for publication at a stated time after his death, the book was eagerly awaited and attracted wide attention on its appearance in 1911. In its intense subjectivity, it gives us a vivid and intimate picture of Wagner’s artistic life, and in its narration of external events several episodes of his life, which had before been matters of more or less mystery, are explained. The publication of this autobiography was the signal for a last and faint raising of the voice of detraction against Wagner’s character in its egotistical isolation. The unrelenting attitude of aggressiveness that he adopted was only the natural attendant upon his genius and its forceful expression. To him who reads aright this record of Wagner’s life must come the realization that self-protection often forced upon him these external attitudes of a selfish nature, and that his supreme confidence in his own power to accomplish his great ideals warranted him in overcoming in any way all obstacles which retarded the accomplishment.

B. L.

FOOTNOTES:

[107] ‘My Life,’ Vol. I.

[108] Kietz, the painter, E. G. Anders and Lehrs, philologists, were the most intimate of these friends.

[109] The pamphlet which Wagner wrote and caused to be circulated publicly in explanation of the symphony is found in Vol. VIII of his collected works (English edition).

[110] ‘Prose Writings,’ Vol. I.

[111] _Ibid._, Vol. II.

[112] _Ibid._, Vol. III.

[113] _Die Musik seit Richard Wagner_, Berlin, 1914.

[114] Eduard Hanslick, celebrated critic, Brahms champion and anti-Wagnerite, b. Prague, 1825; d. Vienna, 1904.

[115] ‘César Franck,’ Paris, 1912.

[116] ‘The Prose Writings of Richard Wagner’ (8 vols.), translated by W. Ashton Ellis, London, 1899.

[117] _Mein Leben_, 1913 (Eng. tr.: ‘My Life,’ 1913).