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John F. Runciman - Richard Wagner

J >> John F. Runciman >> Richard Wagner



RICHARD WAGNER

COMPOSER OF OPERAS

BY

JOHN F. RUNCIMAN

LONDON
G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
1913




TO
HAROLD HODGE



INTRODUCTION


It is now one hundred years since Richard Wagner was born, thirty
since he died. In every land he has his monument in one shape or
another; his music-dramas can be heard all the world over; all the
ancient controversies as to their merits or demerits have died down.
The Bayreuth theatre, the outward and visible sign of his inner
greatness, has risen to the point of its most splendid glory and
lapsed into the limbo of tenth-rate things. Every one who really cares
for the art of music, and especially the art of opera (of which art
music is by far the most important factor), has had ample time and
opportunity for making up his mind. It is, therefore, high time to
simplify and to cease from elaborating. In this book will be found, I
trust, no special pleading, no defence or extenuation, no preposterous
eulogy on the one hand, and on the other no vampire work, but a plain
and concise attempt to depict the mighty artist as he lived and to
describe his artistic achievement as it is. We have all had time to
consider and to sort out (so to say) the reams that have been written
and printed about Wagner: the bulk of it has had to be thrown on the
scrap-heap: what there was of value has, I hope, been utilised.

An author who plans a book on an artist or an artistic question must
be wary, especially at the beginning of his adventure. To start away
with a theory, whether new or old, and to yield to the seductive
temptation to convince humanity of its truth--this is to lay a trap
and to take the path that leads straight into it. Theories should be
kept for scientific matters. A work proving that parallel straight
lines never meet need not land the writer in self-contradictions; and
another writer may prove that they must and do meet, and still avoid
getting tangled amongst his own arguments. I even read a book once in
which it was clearly shown that the earth was flat; and, granted a
ludicrous premise, one could but admire the irrefragable logic with
which the conclusion was reached. With regard to art, be your premises
sound or grotesque, the result is the same--muddle. Logic, science,
philosophy, applied to art, spell certain disaster. With mingled pain
and amusement I have noted how more than one writer on music, setting
out in triumphant high spirits to demonstrate this or that, has before
his third chapter demonstrated just the contrary: I have never seen
anything else occur.

Wagner wrote so much about himself and his art, and appeared so fully
satisfied with his explanations of why he became just what he became
and of why his art was just what it was, that naturally for nearly a
generation his critics fell into one or other of two errors. Either
they accepted his theorisings unreservedly or as unreservedly they
rejected them. In the second case they had to face the difficulty of
coining, shaping, a theory of their own; in either case shipwreck
nearly always promptly ensued; and on the whole, if Wagner had to be
theorised about, one would prefer to have it done by Wagner. He
himself knew the tiny value of his theorisings about his art, for he
declared that when he wrote _Tristan and Isolda_ he found he had
already left his theories far behind. This discovery might well have
served as a warning both to Wagner and to the hosts of his
commentators. Unluckily Wagner was far too fond of theorising,
moralising and generally talking of himself and his works, and he
reckoned he had a big propagandist work to do; so he went on
scribbling to the end. As for the commentators, they neglected the
warning and took Wagner's later doings as an example, with the result
that the library shelves of Europe are stopped and blocked with as big
a heap of rubbish as ever was provoked by great works of art since the
world began to turn round. For Wagner there is an ample excuse: he
honestly thought it necessary to spread his ideas abroad; his aims and
intentions had been so misunderstood, and so stupidly, wickedly,
recklessly misrepresented, that he did not believe his music-dramas
would ever find acceptance until he had cleared the way by explaining
himself. Little good came of it--in fact, the only good result was
that some of his writings fell into the hands of Ludwig II of Bavaria,
and thus led to the ending of his days of misery, and indirectly to
Bayreuth. For the commentators no word of extenuation can be said.
Those, perhaps, of the period 1867-77 were justified in pressing their
master's claims on the public at large, for the support of the public
at large had to be won, and the best way of winning it seemed to lie
in advocating those claims, in season and out of season, through the
agency of the newspaper-press; but the rest of the herd have proved
themselves an unqualified nuisance and a hindrance to a right
understanding of Wagner.

This herd I would not willingly join. In the following pages no
general theory concerning Wagner will be found. I shall indulge in no
theorisings whatever, but stick to the facts, facts which can now be
ascertained with certainty. My endeavour will be to tell a plain,
unvarnished tale of what Wagner did and of what he suffered, of the
environment amidst which he grew up and laboured and struggled: with
all that he said and wrote I shall deal as briefly as may be,
regarding his endless loquacity of mouth and pen as of interest only
when it throws real light on the artist. Least of all shall I waste
the reader's patience on the morals that may be drawn from his musical
works. The moral to be drawn from his prose works is simply that a
man, even a stupendously great man, may write far too much; the moral
to be drawn from his musical works every man may find out for himself:
for myself, I have found none, any more than I could ever find a moral
in a play of AEschylus or Sophocles or Shakespeare.

There are plenty of authorities for the statements now to be made. We
have the exhaustive _Life_ by Glasenapp and W. Ashton Ellis; then
there is Wagner's own work, _My Life_, lately translated into
English; finally there are the _Letters_. Many of these are of no
interest or value whatever, dealing only with details concerning
scores and proof-sheets and petty money matters. Many, on the other
hand, notably those to Uhlig, are invaluable to every one who wishes
to understand Wagner. Extensive use is made of them in this book,
though, as they are easily accessible, I have forborne to quote more
than is absolutely necessary. _My Life_ I think but little of, and
have not relied greatly on it.

Wagner the reformer will receive no lengthy consideration. He did not
"reform" the opera form--the opera form of Mozart and Weber needed no
reforming--he simply developed it. He did reform operatic performances
by insisting on precision and intelligence in place of slovenliness
and stupidity, on enthusiasm for art in place of stolid indifference;
and he did as much in the concert-room. I shall not theorize about
these matters, but point out what he achieved by making a continuous
appeal to indubitable, indisputable facts.

I am indebted to Messrs. H. Grevel & Co. for kind permission to print
extracts from Mr. Shedlock's translation of Wagner's _Letters_, and to
Messrs. Novello for similar permission regarding quotations from the
libretti of the operas. Two words may be said about the quotations,
both words and music, of the operas: in some cases, when I could
neither find nor make an adequate translation of verses, I have stuck
to the original German; with regard to the music, I have given as
little as possible. Both musical and verbal citations are meant for
reference--there is only one exception, the Sailors' Song from the
opening of _Tristan_. Catalogues of Wagner's themes have for long been
issued by several publishers; but they are of small assistance in
helping one to understand Wagner.

J.F.R.




CONTENTS

I EARLY LIFE

II EARLY BOYHOOD

III EARLY LIFE (_continued_)

IV JUVENILE WORKS

V PARIS

VI 'RIENZI' AND 'THE FLYING DUTCHMAN'

VII DRESDEN

VIII 'TANNHAeUSER'

IX 'LOHENGRIN'

X EXILE

XI 'TRISTAN AND ISOLDA'

XII 'THE MASTERSINGERS OF NUREMBERG'

XIII KING LUDWIG

XIV 'THE NIBELUNG'S RING' AND THE RHINEGOLD'

XV 'THE VALKYRIE'

XVI 'SIEGFRIED'

XVII 'THE DUSK OF THE GODS'

XVIII 'PARSIFAL'; THE END; THE MAN

INDEX



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


PORTRAIT OF WAGNER (_Photogravure_)

WAGNER'S BIRTHPLACE: THE SIGN OF THE RED
AND WHITE LION, ON THE BRUeHL, LEIPZIG

THE WAGNER THEATRE AT BAYREUTH

LISZT
(_From life and on stone by N. Hanhart_)

WAGNER
(_From the portrait by A.F. Pecht_)

KING LUDWIG OF BAVARIA

WAGNER IN 1877

PALAZZO VENDRAMIN CALERGI, VENICE, WHERE
WAGNER DIED, FEB. 13, 1883

CARL TAUSIG




CHAPTER I

EARLY LIFE


I

As the springtide of 1813 was melting into early summer the poet and
musician of spring days and summer nights was born at the house of the
Red and White Lion on the Bruehl in old Leipzig. The precise date was
May 22; and owing to many causes the 16th of August came round before,
at the church of St. Thomas, the child was christened Wilhelm Richard
Wagner. The events and circumstances of the period have furnished the
imaginative with many striking portents with regard to the future
mighty composer; and, to do the prophets full justice, after the
event--long after the event--they have widely opened their mouths and
uttered prophecies. Thus the name of the house, describing a beast
such as never was on sea or land, distinctly warned a drowsy people
that the monstrous dragon of _Siegfried_ was about to take the road
leading from Nowhere to Bayreuth. The spring foretold the songs in
_Tannhaeuser_ and the _Valkyrie_; the summer, the nights in King
Mark's Cornish castle-garden and amongst the fragrant lime-trees in
the streets of ancient Nuremberg; the horrors of the war raging at the
very gates of Leipzig and Napoleon's flight, the advent of the
preacher who was to earn a long exile by advising the Saxon soldiers
not to shoot their brethren. Events provided material for these and
many another score of prognostications: only, fortunately, no one read
events rightly at the time, and something fresh was left for the
biographers to expend their ingenuity upon.

Richard Wagner came of a German lower middle-class stock. There is not
amongst his ancestry a single man distinguished in letters or any art.
His uncle Adolph, of whom some Bayreuth gentlemen make much, would not
be remembered had he not been Wagner's uncle. Only by patient research
has it been discovered that one or more of his forebears could so much
as play the organ. His father was an amateur theatrical enthusiast,
and he too would have been utterly forgotten had he not been Wagner's
father. His stepfather--though this seems hardly to the point--was an
actor and portrait-painter; and his one claim to remembrance is that
he was Wagner's stepfather. So, however scientifically minded we may
be, however strongly disposed to account for the sudden appearance of
a stupendous genius by the cheap and easy method of pointing to some
distinguished ancestor and talking pompously of the laws of heredity,
in Wagner's case we are baffled and beaten. He came like a
thunderbolt out of a blue sky. We must be content with the fact that
he came. His father and grandfather were state or municipal officials
both; and bearing in mind Wagner's frank detestation of officialdom,
the scientist can scarcely draw much comfort from that.

The grandfather, Gottlob Friedrich Wagner, was born in 1736, only a
few years later than Haydn. In 1769 he married the daughter of a
charity-school master or caretaker; and in 1770, the year of
Beethoven's birth, his first child, christened Carl Friedrich Wilhelm,
was born. Four years later Adolph arrived. Gottlob was a douanier, an
exciseman, at the Rannstadt gate of Leipzig, and passed his days, I
dare say, as honestly as an exciseman can, in examining incoming
travellers to see that they did not bring with them so much as an egg
that had not paid duty. He died in 1795. Meantime, Carl Friedrich had
received a thoroughly sound education, and he became deputy-registrar
to the Leipzig town court. In 1789 he married Johanna Rosina Paetz
(whose name, it seems, is susceptible of many spellings).

The scientific mind may after all find consolation in the
all-illuminating truth that Friedrich and all his children were more
or less passionately addicted to the theatre and attracted by it. It
was Friedrich's one hobby; and though Friedrich's brother Adolph had a
horror of it, the feeling was not aroused by it as an artistic
institution, but as an agency for the intellectual, moral and worldly
ruin of young men and women. In his leisure Friedrich arranged
dramatic performances and took part in them, and, as amateurs go, he
appears to have been highly successful. Histrionic persons were
constant guests at his house on the Bruehl--amongst them notably one,
Ludwig Geyer, who became a fast friend of the family and played an
important role, off the stage, with regard to that family soon after
Richard's birth. Friedrich, during his later years, cannot have had
much spare time for amateur theatricals or any other amusement.
Napoleon was fighting his last desperate fights against the combined
forces of reactionary Europe; all the powers of feudalism had combined
to crush an emperor who had no royal blood in his veins; he raged over
Germany like an infuriated beast with a genius for military tactics,
scattering armies which dispersed only to join together and face him
again. While Richard was in his cradle the whole of Saxony was filled
with the squalor and misery and loathsome terrors of war. Leipzig was
occupied by the French; Marshal Davoust was left there as commandant,
with power of life and death, and all the other privileges of a
military governor; and in the deputy-registrar of the law-court he
found the man for the post of provisional chief of the police "of
public safety." Who kept the public safe from the police I am unable
to say. Fighting was going on perpetually in the neighbourhood; the
dead and dying lay scattered in all directions; the stench bred
epidemics more murderous than all Napoleon's cannon. Friedrich must
have found his hands full day and night. Richard was baptized on
August 16; the following day Napoleon won a victory which cost him
dear; the 18th, being Sunday, was observed as such by a soldiery in
need of a rest; on the 19th Napoleon was a beaten man, and ran to save
his skin past the windows of the house of the Red and White Lion on
the Bruehl. Richard's mother had been trembling for her own safety and
that of her children and husband; but when, as she herself afterwards
told, she saw the dreaded conqueror bolt in haste without his hat, she
breathed again. Whether she and the family were any better off under
the deliverers is a question that does not concern us here: the point
is that she thought she was. It was all one to Richard, who, aged
three months, slept peacefully on.

After the deliverance Friedrich's work became even heavier than
before. The town through its length and breadth was shattered and
dilapidated; whole families were homeless and packed like rabbits in
hutches; the slaughtered dead, men and beasts, could not be buried
quick enough; black death stalked abroad in the guise of what was
called hospital typhus--an epidemic fever of some kind. After the
French flight, I take it, provisional chief-policeman Wagner had
returned to his deputy-registrarship; but his toils were none the
lighter for that. He exhausted himself; the appalling fever attacked
him and he had no strength to resist it; and he died on November 22,
exactly six months after the birth of Richard. Wagner's ill-luck, his
wicked fairy, struck her first blow while his age had to be reckoned
in months; she went on striking, and never ceased to strike, until he
was beginning to grow a little weary and his age was reckoned in
decades of years, and in terms of masterpieces accomplished and
insults and ill-usage by no means patiently borne. It must have seemed
hard to his widowed mother, after the uncertainties and horrors of the
last years, that when at last a period of happy peace seemed about to
dawn, uncertainties and griefs and worries of a fresh sort should come
upon her.

Whether Frau Wagner ever actually drew any pension from the good
burghers of Leipzig or the greedy state officials of Saxony seems,
when all is said, very uncertain. In such times of stress and struggle
great crown officers, laudably anxious about their own interests and
the interests of their families, are apt to be rather careless, not to
say callous, about the smaller fry. However, pension or no pension,
with the aid of relatives and friends the Wagners pulled through.
Chief and best amongst the friends was Ludwig Geyer.

A few words must be said about him. Born in 1780, he was ten years
Carl Friedrich's junior. An actor who had taken up painting, or a
painter who had taken up acting, in both arts he had won at any rate a
local reputation. We know what was thought of his histrionic gifts
from more or less competent contemporaries; but what to think of his
paintings I do not know, for two reasons: I do not trust my own
judgment in such a matter, and if I did, I have never seen any of
Geyer's work. Of this, however, I am very sure: he cannot have been a
good painter unless nature had worked a miracle in sending a good
painter to Germany in the eighteenth or nineteenth century. German
artists of the period must be classified not as sheep and goats, but
as bad goats and worse goats. But if he was not a fine painter he was
what is better, or, at any rate, more useful to the rest of human
kind, a fine character: a noble, generous, self-sacrificing man. In
haste on hearing of Carl Friedrich's death he came from Dresden to
attend to the burying of the dead and the nourishing of the living.
The details of this first period of Richard's ill-fortune do not
amount to a great deal and are unimportant, since our subject is
Richard, and his mother, brother and sisters only so far as their
lives and characters influenced Richard. Albert, the eldest of the
children, was now fourteen years old; he was at the Royal school in
Meissen, and there he remained. Rosalie went to dwell with a friend of
Geyer's, a lady who lived at Dresden. Louise was adopted by a Frau
Hartwig, also at Dresden. Richard in his cradle remained with his
mother and the younger members of the tribe in Leipzig.

And so presently life began to move on as before, while the dead man
slept in his grave. But immediately fresh troubles came. Albert fell
dangerously ill and was threatened with a total breakdown of his
health; Richard was an ailing infant; and a change in the arrangements
of the theatrical company which provided Geyer with a portion of his
income compelled him to remain in Dresden continuously. This proved
really a stroke of good fortune. Glasenapp, basing his calculations
on I know not what authorities or documents, computes that his
earnings as an actor at this time came to L156 a year, and there seems
every reason to think he was at least fairly well paid for his
portraits. It was not enough to be shared between two families, or, we
had better say, to be devoted to the up-keep of two homes. He
determined rapidly on a bold stroke. That he was in love with Frau
Wagner is more than any one can declare with confidence; but she was
an amiable, bright woman, a good mother and thrifty housekeeper; and
it is likely enough that she had inspired a deep affection in a
singularly loving man. After the recovery of Albert the widow had gone
for a change to Dresden; and there Geyer resolved to marry her--and
resolved quickly; for Carl Friedrich died in November 1813, and early
in 1814 the marriage took place. Soon after, the new Frau Geyer
returned to Leipzig; then the whole family migrated to Dresden, where
Richard was to pass from babyhood into boyhood and spend the first
fourteen years of his life.


II

The Geyer-Wagner family set up their tent in the Moritz-strasse in
Dresden, which belonged to the seventeenth or eighteenth century--was
in fact almost mediaeval. Life must have been atrociously narrow and
trammelled to any free spirit. But Germany did not produce many of
that sort at the time, and those she did produce were quickly
silenced in gaol. Whether Geyer had yearnings for outward liberty
cannot be said; but if he had he gave no expression to them, being
himself a court player and a semi-court painter. Undoubtedly the main
thing to him was that in the drowsy court air he could at least earn
the means of bringing up adequately the large family he had taken on
his shoulders. He played constantly in all sorts of parts, and in his
off hours painted; he also wrote a number of theatre pieces of varying
type and importance--none of which concern us here. His wife enjoyed a
period of peace in which to attend to her husband, children and house,
as a faithful hausfrau should. If Geyer was industrious and much
occupied, he nevertheless found time to cultivate friendships, and
some of them in later days were continued by Richard.

The whole life of the circle went on around the theatre or in it; it
must have been their whole world, for of culture other than of the
theatre there is no indication--save one or two half-hearted remarks
of Geyer's at a slightly later period. They admired Goethe and
Schiller, of course, and knew their theatre works; they knew of the
Romantics in so far as they affected the theatre; it seems to have
been only through the theatre they saw anything or could see anything.
Breathing the theatrical atmosphere constantly, one after another of
Geyer's step-children caught the theatre malady (for it will be
admitted that men or women must have something the matter with them if
they deliberately choose a theatrical life); and within a few years
three of them were appearing on the stage. Albert left school and went
to the university to study medicine; after a very brief struggle he
gave this up, studied singing, and in 1819 or 1820 made his debut as a
light-opera tenor. Before this Geyer had warned him against taking
such a course; but apparently he was obdurate. On May 2 of the former
year Rosalie had first appeared as an actress in a piece by Geyer;
still earlier Louise had also begun acting child-parts. There must
have been a good deal of family discussion and commotion about these
things. It had been the wish of Friedrich Wagner that Rosalie should,
or perhaps might, take to the stage as a profession, but in no case
until she had attained the age of sixteen. Friedrich's brother Adolph,
as I have said, set himself in deadly opposition to anything of the
sort happening. Letters and counter-letters ensued; but the instinct
of the youngsters turned out to be sufficiently strong, and perhaps
the opposition of Geyer too feeble to carry the day; and one after
another the Wagners took to the boards as ducklings to water. Geyer
kept his word to his dead friend, however; and Rosalie, though she had
been long preparing, made no public appearance until she reached
sixteen. A little longer and Clara took up the family occupation. How
all this affected the family generally, and especially Richard, we
shall see before long. In the meantime it may be mentioned that
Julius, the second son, nine years Richard's senior, was apprenticed
at Eisleben to Geyer's younger brother, a goldsmith: he alone was not
pulled stagewards.


III

Naturally enough there is nothing but idle and frequently fatuous
hearsay to repeat of these early years, save this only, that Richard
did not show the slightest musical precocity. Nor need this surprise
us. Mozart, Bach, Beethoven were brought up in households where music
was as the daily bread; their ears must have been filled with it while
they were in their cradles. It is true that Handel's father dreaded
music as a disease and a musician as a vagabond; but in this case the
precocity is quite unattested, and the stories of the six-year boy
practising on a dumb-spinet at midnight originated when the boy had
become the most celebrated musician in Europe. I wish here to make a
few not wholly irrelevant remarks. The tales of Handel's wondrous
babyhood were repeated, and repeated many times, by writers who did
not know what a dumb-spinet was and certainly made no inquiries
regarding the source of the tales. Both legend and dumb-spinet are
swallowed cheerfully to this day because so many authors accept them;
and I would point out that the first author, No. I, was simply copied
recklessly by author No. II, that author No. III, maybe a little less
recklessly, copied No. II because he was supported by No. I; and thus
the game went on until the simple minds of a generation think that
what fifty writers have said must be true. Ten thousand times more has
been written about Wagner than all that Handel provoked, and even less
honest investigation has been made--result, a gigantic series of
tales, genuine or mythical, based on what amounts to no authority
whatever. Unless these are verifiable I leave them to the care of
others, and pass on. So with regard to Wagner's childhood we know he
showed himself no wonderful genius. We do know that he lived amidst
folk whose whole conversation must have been of the theatre and drama,
actors and actresses; that he was petted and taken about by his
stepfather, and as soon as he was old enough, or sooner, went to the
theatre while rehearsals were going on. "The Cossack," as Geyer called
him, grew up a lively, quick-witted child, active and full of
mischief, "leaving a trousers-seat per day on the hedge" and sliding
down banisters--much indeed like many other children who afterwards
for want of leisure neglected to compose a _Ring_ or a _Tristan_. The
theatrical life, I feel sure, did not differ greatly from the same
life to-day. It is for the most part a sordid, petty existence, one in
which one's days, weeks, months and years are frittered away; they
pass and there is nothing tangible to show for them. When performances
are not over until late, no one rises early; then come the rehearsals;
then the evening performance again--and so home and to bed. Long
intervals of waiting between spells of monotonous work can hardly be
used for anything but gossiping at the stage-door or idling in cafes.
Save for those who have risen high in popular favour--or, during
Wagner's boyhood, the favour of kings or their mistresses--it is an
uncertain life, with engagements terminable, and very often
terminated, after a few years; and thus a hand-to-mouth way of
grubbing along is generated, and a vagrant spirit developed: and in
the majority, the huge majority, of cases lives spent in squalor, mean
squabblings, spells of mechanical work alternating with enforced
idleness, end in destitution and utter misery. Uncle Adolph was quite
right: he knew how close the ordinary actor and opera-singer was to
the _cabotin_. But Geyer, we must remember, was very far away indeed
from the _cabotin_. Good-natured and sociable as he seemed, he must
have held to his purpose with iron determination and stuck to his
work; and whatever Richard and his brothers and sisters may have seen
going on around them, we may be sure they saw none of it in their own
home.

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