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WITH A PORTRAIT OF RICHARD WAGNER.
It is a curious fact to note how often
art-controversy has become edged with a
bitterness rivaling even the gall and venom
of religious dispute. Scholars have not yet
forgotten the fiery war of words which raged
between Richard Bentley and his opponents
concerning the authenticity of the "Epistles
of Phalaris," nor how literary Germany was
divided into two hostile camps by Wolf's
attack on the personality of Homer. It is no
less fresh in the minds of critics how that
modern Jupiter, Lessing, waged a long and
bitter battle with the Titans of the French
classical drama, and finally crushed them
with the thunder-bolt of the "Dramaturgie;"
nor what acrimony sharpened the discussion
between the rival theorists in music, Gluck
and Piccini, at Paris. All of the intensity
of these art-campaigns, and many of the conditions
of the last, enter into the contest between
Richard Wagner and the "Italianissimi"
of the present day.
The exact points at issue have been so befogged by the smoke of the battle, that many of the large class who are musically interested, but have never had an opportunity to study the question, will find an advantage in a clear and comprehensive sketch of the facts and principles involved. There are still many people who think of Wagner as a youthful and eccentric enthusiast, all afire with misdirected genius, a mere carpet-knight on the sublime battle-field of art, a beginner just sowing his wild-oats in works like "Lohengrin," "Tristan and Iseult," or the "Rheingold." It will be a revelation full of suggestive value for these to realize that he is a musical thinker, ripe with sixty years of labor and experience; that he represents the rarest and choicest fruits of modern culture, not only as musician, but as poet and philosopher; that he is the only example in the history of the art where massive scholarship and the power of subtile analysis have been united, in a preëminent degree, with great creative genius. Preliminary to a study of what Wagner and his disciples entitle the "Art-work of the Future," let us take a swift survey of music as a medium of expression for the beautiful, and some of the forms which it has assumed.
This Ariel of the fine arts sends
its messages to the human soul by virtue
of a fourfold capacity: Firstly, the imitation of the
voices of Nature, such as the winds, the
waves, and the cries of animals; secondly,
its potential delight as melody, modulation,
rhythm, harmony; in other words, its simple
worth as a "thing of beauty," without regard to
cause or consequence; thirdly, its
force of boundless suggestion; fourthly, that
affinity for union with the more definite and
exact forms of the imagination (poetry), by
which the intellectual context of the latter is
raised to a far higher power of grace, beauty,
passion, sweetness, without losing individuality
of outline; like, indeed, the hazy aureole,
which painters set on the brow of the man
Jesus, to fix the seal of the ultimate divinity.
Though several or all of these may be united
in the same composition, each musical work
may be characterized in the main as descriptive,
sensuous, suggestive, or dramatic, according
as either element contributes most
largely to its purpose. Simple melody or
harmony appeals mostly to the sensuous love
of sweet sounds. The symphony does this in
an enlarged and complicated sense, but is
still more marked by the marvelous suggestive
energy with which it unlocks all the
secret raptures of fancy, floods the borderlands
of thought, with a glory not to be found
on sea or land, and paints ravishing pictures,
that come and go like dreams, with colors
drawn from the "twelve-tinted tone-spectrum."
Shelley describes this peculiar influence of
music in his "Prometheus Unbound,"
with exquisite beauty and truth
As the symphony best expresses the
suggestive potency in music, the operatic form
incarnates its capacity of definite thought,
and the expression of that thought. The
term "lyric," as applied to the genuine
operatic conception, is a misnomer. Under
the accepted operatic form,
however, it has relative truth, as
the main musical purpose of
opera seems, hitherto, to have
been less to furnish expression
for intense emotions, grand
thoughts, or exquisite sentiments, than to
grant the vocal virtuoso opportunity to display
phenomenal qualities of voice
and execution. But all opera,
however it may stray from the
fundamental idea, suggests this dramatic
element in music, just as mere
lyricism in the poetic art is the
blossom from which is unfolded the fullblown
perfection of the word-drama, the
grandest form of all poetry.
That music, by and of itself,
cannot express the intellectual
element in the beautiful dream-images
of art with precision, is a palpable
truth. Yet, by its imperial dominion over
the sphere of emotion and sentiment, the
connection of the latter with complicated
mental phenomena is made to bring into the
domain of tone vague and shiftiug fancies
and pictures. How much further music can
be made to assimilate to the other arts in
directness of mental suggestion, by wedding
to it the noblest forms of poetry, and making
each the complement of the other, is the
knotty problem which underlies the great
art-controversy, about which our article
concerns itself. On the one side we have the
claim that music is the all-sufficient law unto
itself; that its appeal to sympathy is through
the intrinsic sweetness of harmony and tune,
and the intellect must be satisfied with what
it may accidentally gleam in this harvest-field;
that, in the delirious rapture experienced
in the sensuous apperception of its
beauty, lies the highest phase of art-sensibility.
Therefore, concludes the syllogism,
it matters nothing as to the character of the
libretto or poem, to whose words the music
so the highest art is that which best embodies
the immortal thought of the universe
as reflected in the mirror of man's consciousness;
that music, as speaking the most spiritual language of
any of the art family, is burdened with the
most pressing respoiosibility as
the interpreter between the
finite and the infinite; that all
its forms must be measured by
the earnestness and success with
which they teach and suggest what is loftiest
in aspiration and the truest in thought; that
music, when wedded to the sublimest form
of poetry (the drama), produces the consummate
art-result, and sacrifices to some
extent, its power of boundless suggestion, only
to acquire a greater glory and influence,
that of investing definite intellectual images with
an exquisite spiritual raiment, through
which they shine on the supreme
altitudes of ideal thought; that to
make this marriage perfect as an art-form
and fruitful in result, the two partners must
come as equals to the divine sacrament,
neither one the drudge of the other; that in
this organic fusion music and poetry contribute,
each its best, to emancipate art from
its thraldom to that which is merely trivial,
commonplace, and accidental, and make it a
revelation to the human soul of all that is
most exalted in thought, sentiment, and purpose.
Such is the æsthetic theory of Richard
Wagner's art-work.
It is suggestive to note that the earliest recognized function of music, before it had learned to enslave itself to mere sensuous enjoyment, was similar in spirit to that which its latest reformer demands for it in the art of the future. The glory of its birth then shone on its brow. It was the handmaid and minister of the religious instinct. The imagination became afire with the mystery of life and Nature, and burst into the flames and frenzies of rhythm. Poetry was born, but instantly sought the wings of music for a higher flight than the mere word would permit. Even the great epics of the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" were originally sung or chanted by the Homeridæ, and the same essential union seems to have been in some measure demanded afterward in the Greek drama, which, at its best, was always inspired with the religious sentiment. There is every reason to believe that the chorus of the drama of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, uttered their comments on the action of the play with such a prolongation and variety of pitch in the rhythmic intervals as to constitute a sustained and melodic recitative. Music at this time was an essential part of the drama. When the creative genius of Greece had set toward its ebb, they were divorced, and music was only set to lyric forms. Such remained the status of the art till, in the Italian Renaissance, modern opera was born in the reunion of music and the drama. Like the other arts, it assumed at the outset to be a mere revival of antique traditions. The great poets of Italy had then passed away, and it was left for music to fill the void.
The muse, Polyhymnia, soon emerged
from the stage of childish stammering.
Guittone di Arezzo taught her to fix her thoughts
in indelible signs, and two centuries of
training culminated in the inspired composers,
Orlando di Lasso and Palestrina. Of the gradual
degradation of the operatic art as its
forms became more elaborate and fixed; of
the arbitrary transfer of absolute musical
forms like the aria, duet, finale, etc., into the
action of the opera without regard to poetic
propriety; of the growing tendency to treat
the human voice like any other instrument
merely to show its resources as an organ; of
the final utter bondage of the poet to the
musician, till opera became little more than a
congeries of musico-gymnastic forms, wherein
the tenor castrato could show his vocal tight-rope
dancing, it needs not to speak at length,
for some of these vices have not yet disappeared.
In the language of Dante's heavenly
guide through the Inferno, at one stage of
their wanderings, when the sights were peculiarly
mournful and desolate
The loss of all poetic verity and earnestness in opera furnished the great composer Gluck with the motive of the bitter and protracted contest which he waged with varying success throughout Europe, though principally in Paris. Gluck boldly affirmed, and carried out the principle in his compositions, that the task of dramatic music was to accompany the different phases of emotion in the text, and give them their highest effect of spiritual intensity. The singer must be the mouth-piece of the poet, and must take the most extreme care in giving the full poetical burden of the song. Thus, the declamatory music became of great importance, and Gluck's recitative reached an unequaled degree of perfection.
The critics of Gluck's time hurled at him
the same charges which are familiar to us
now as coming from the mouths and pens of
the enemies of Wagner's music. Yet Gluck,
however conscious of the ideal unity between
music and poetry, never thought of bringing
this about by a sacrifice of any of the forms
of his own peculiar art. His influence,
however, was very great, and the traditions of
the great maestro's art have been kept alive
in the works of his no less great disciples,
Mehul, Cherubini, Spontini, and Meyerbeer.
Two other attempts to engraft new and
vital power on the rigid and trivial
sentimentality of the Italian forms of opera were
those of Rossini and Weber. The former
was gifted with the greatest affluence of pure
melodiousness ever given to a composer.
But even his sparkling originality and
freshness did little more than reproduce the old
forms under a more attractive guise.
Weber, on the other hand, stood in the van of a
movement which had its fountain-head in the
strong romantic and national feeling,
pervading the whole of society and literature.
There was a general revival of mediæval and
popular poetry, with its balmy odor of the
woods, and fields, and streams. Weber's
melody was the direct offspring of the
tunefulness of the German Volkslied,
and so it expressed, with wonderful freshness and beauty,
all the range of passion and sentiment within
the limits of this pure and simple language.
But the boundaries were far too narrow to
build upon them the ultimate union of music
and poetry, which should express the perfect
harmony of the two arts. While it is true
that all of the great German composers
protested, by their works, against the spirit and
character of the Italian school of music,
Wagner claims that the first abrupt and
strongly-defined departure toward a radical
reform in art is found in Beethoven's Ninth
Symphony with chorus. Speaking of this remarkable
leap from instrumental to vocal
music in a professedly symphonic composition,
Wagner, in his "Essay on Beethoven,"
says: "We declare that the work of art,
which was formed and quickened entirely by
that deed, must present the most perfect artistic
form, i. e., that form in which, as for
the drama, so also and especially for music,
every conventionality would be abolished."
Beethoven is asserted to have founded the
new musical school, when he admitted, by
his recourse to the vocal cantata in the
greatest of his symphonic works, that he no longer
recognized absolute music as sufficient unto
itself.
In Bach and Handel, the great masters of fugue and counterpoint; in Rossini, Mozart, and Weber, the consummate creators of melody—then, according to this view, we only recognize thinkers in the realm of pure music. In Beethoven, the greatest of them all, was laid the basis of the new epoch of tone-poetry. In the immortal songs of Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Liszt, and Franz, and the symphonies of the first four, the vitality of the reformatory idea is richly illustrated. In the music-drama of Wagner is found the full flower and development of the art work.
WILLIAM RICHARD WAGNER, the formal projector
of the gigantic changes whose details
are yet to be sketched, was born at Leipsic
in 1813. As a child he displayed no very
marked artistic tastes, though his ear and
memory for music were quite remarkable.
When admitted to the University of Dresden,
the young student, however, distinguished
himself by his very great talent for literary
composition and the classical languages. To
this early culture, perhaps, we are indebted
for the great poetic power which has enabled
him to compose the remarkable libretti which
have furnished the basis of his music. His
first creative attempt was a blood-thirsty
drama, where forty-two characters are killed,
and the few survivors are haunted by the
ghosts. Young Wagner soon devoted himself to the
study of music, and, in 1833, became a pupil
of Theodor Weinlig, a distinguished teacher of
harmony and counterpoint. His four years
of study at this time
were also years of activity in creative experiment,
as he composed four operas.
His first opera of note was "Rienzi," with
which he went to Paris in 1837 In spite of
Meyerbeer's efforts in its favor, this work was
rejected, and laid aside for some years. Wagner
supported himself by musical criticism
and other literary work, and soon was in a
position to offer another opera, "Der Fliegende
Holländer," to the authorities of the Grand
Opera-House. Again the directors refused
the work, but were so charmed with the
beauty of the libretto that they bought it to
be reset to music. Until the year 1842, life
was a trying struggle for the indomitable
young musician. "Rienzi" was then produced
at Dresden, so much to the delight of
the King of Saxony that the composer was
made royal Capellmeister and leader of the
orchestra. The production of "Der Fliegende
Holländer" quickly followed; next came
"Tannhäuser" and "Lohengrin," to be swiftly
succeeded by the "Meistersinger von Nürnberg."
This period of our maestro's musical
activity also commenced to witness the develment
of his theories on the philosophy of his
art, and some of his most remarkable critical
writings were then given to the world.
Political troubles obliged Wagner to spend
seven years of exile in Zurich; thence he went
to London, where he remained till 1861 as conductor
of the London Philharmonic Society.
In 1861 the exile returned to his native country,
and spent several years in Germany and
Russia—there having arisen quite a furore
for his music in the latter country. The enthusiasm
awakened in the breast of King Louis
of Bavaria by "Der Fliegende Holländer,"
resulted in a summons to Wagner to settle at
Munich, and with the glories of the
Royal Opera-House in that city his name has
since been principally connected. The culminating
art-splendor of his life, however,
will be the production of his stupendous
tetralogy, the "Ring der Nibelungen," at the
great opera-house, now in process of erection
at Baireuth, in the spring of the year 1875.
The first element to be noted in Wagner's
operatic forms is the energetic protest against
the artificial and conventional in music. The
utter want of dramatic symmetry and fitness
in the operas we have been accustomed to
hear, could only be overlooked on the score
of habit, and the tendency to submerge all
else in the mere enjoyment of the music.
This utter variance of music and poetry was
to Wagner the stumbling-block which, first
of all, must be removed. So he crushed at one
stroke all the hard, arid forms which existed
in the lyrical drama as it had been known.
His opera, then, is no longer a congeries of
separate musical numbers, like duets, arias,
chorals, and finales, set in a flimsy web of
formless recitative, without reference to
dramatic economy. His great purpose is lofty
dramatic truth, and to this end he sacrifices
the whole framework of accepted musical
forms, with the exception of the chorus, and
this he remodels. The musical energy is
concentrated in the dialogue as the main factor
of the dramatic problem, and fashioned
entirely according to the requirements of the
action. The continuous flow of beautiful
melody takes the place alike of the dry
recitative and the set musical forms,
which characterize the accepted school of opera. As
the dramatic motif demands, this "continuous
melody" rises into the highest ecstasies of
the lyrical fervor, or ebbs into a chant-like
swell of subdued feeling, like the ocean after
the rush of the storm. If Wagner has destroyed
musical forms, he has also added a
positive element. In place of the aria we
have the logos. This is the musical expression
of the principal passion underlying the
action of the drama. Whenever, in the course
of the development of the story, this passion
comes into ascendency, the heavenly strains
of the logos are heard anew, stilling all other
sounds. Gounod has, in part, applied this
principle in "Faust." All opera-goers will
remember the intense dramatic effect arising
from the recurrence of the same exquisite
lyric outburst from the lips of Marguerite.
The peculiar character of Wagner's word-drama
next arouses critical interest and attention.
The composer is his own poet, and his
creative genius shines no less here than in the
world of tone. The musical energy flows entirely
from the dramatic conditions, like the
electrical current from the cups of the battery;
and the rhythmical structure of the
melos (tune) is simply the transfiguration of
the poetical basis. The poetry, then, is all-important
in the music-drama. Wagner has rejected the
forms of blank verse and rhyme as
utterly unsuited to the lofty purposes of
music, and has gone to the metrical principle of
afl the Teutonic and Slavonic poetry. This
rhythmic element of alliteration, or staffrhyme,
we find magnificently illustrated in the Scandinavian
Eddas, and even in our own AngloSaxon fragments
of the days of Caedmon and Alcuin.
By the useof this new form,
verse and melody glide together in one
exquisite rhythm, in which it seems impossible to
separate the one from the other. The strong
accents of the alliterating syllables supply the
music with firmness, while the low-toned
syllables give opportunity for the most varied
nuances of declamation.
The first radical development of Wagner's
theories we see in "The Flying Dutchman."
In "Tannhäuser" and "Lohengrin" they find
full sway. The utter revolt of his mind from
the trivial and commonplace sentimentalities
of Italian opera led him to believe that the
most heroic and lofty motives alone should
furnish the dramatic foundation of opera. For
a while he oscillated between history and legend,
as best adapted to furnish his material.
In selecting the dreamland of myth and legend,
we may detect another example of the
profound and exigeant art-instincts which have
ruled the whole of Wagner's life. There could
be no question as to the utter incongruity of
any dramatic picture of ordinary events, or
ordinary personages, finding expression in
musical utterance. Genuine and profound art
must always be consistent with itself, and
what we recognize as general truth. Even
characters set in the comparatively near
background of history, are too closely related to
our own familiar surroundings of thought and
mood to be regarded as artistically natural in
the use of music as the organ of the everyday
life of emotion and sentiment. But with
the dim and heroic shapes that haunt the
border-land of the supernatural, which we call
legend, the case is far different. This is the
drama of the demi-gods, living in a different
atmosphere from our own, however akin to
ours may be their passions and purposes. For
these we are no longer compelled to regard
the medium of music as a forced and untruthful
expression, for do they not dwell in the
magic lands of the imagination? All sense
of dramatic inconsistency instantly vanishes,
and the conditions of artistic illusion are perfect.
Thus all of Wagner's works, from "Der Fliegende Holländer "to the "Ring der Nibelungen," the last part of which is now in process of composition, have been located in the world of myth, in obedience to a profound art-principle. The opera of "Tristan and Iseult," first performed in 1865, announced Wagner's absolute emancipation, both in the construction of music and poetry, from the time-honored and time-corrupted canons, and, aside from the last great work, may be received as the most perfect representation of his school.
The third main feature in the Wagner music is the wonderful use of the orchestra as a factor in the solution of the art-problem. This is no longer a mere accompaniment to the singer, but translates the passion of the play into a grand symphony, running parallel and commingling with the vocal music. Wagner, as a consummate master of orchestration, has had no equal since Beethoven; and he uses his power with marvelous effect to heighten the dramatic intensity of the action, and, at the same time, to convey certain meanings, which can only find vent in the vague and indistinct forms of pure music. The romantic conception of mediæval love, the shudderings and raptures of Christian revelation, have certain phases that absolute music alone can express. The orchestra, then, becomes as much en integral part of the music-drama, in its actual current movement, as the chorus, or the leading performers. Placed on the stage, yet out of sight, its strains might almost be fancied the sound of the sympathetic communion of good and evil spirits, with whose presence mystics formerly claimed man was constantly surrounded. Wagner's use of the orchestra may be illustrated from the opera of "Lohengrin."
The ideal background, from which the
emotions of the human actors in the drama
are reflected with supernatural light, is the
conception of the "Holy Graal," the mystic
symbol of the Christian faith, and its descent
from the skies, guarded by hosts of seraphim.
This is the subject of the orchestral prelude,
and never have the sweetnesses mid terrors
of the Christian ecstasy been more divinely
expressed. The prelude opens with longdrawn
chords of the violins, in the highest
octaves, in the most exquisite pianissimo.
The inner eye of the spirit discerns in this the
suggestion of their shapeless white clouds,
hardly discernible from the aërial blue of
the sky. Suddenly the strings seem to sound
from the farthest distance, in continued
pianissimo, and the melody, the Graal-motive, takes
shape, and the lofty and serene clouds to move
and thrill with a new meaning. Gradually,
to the fancy, a group of angels seem to reveal
themselves, slowly descending from the heavenly
heights, and bearing in their midst the
Sangreal. Glorious harmonies throb through
the air, augmenting in richness and sweetness,
till the fortissimo of the full orchestra reveals
the sacred mystery in overpowering splendor.
With this climax of spiritual ecstasy the
harmonious waves gradually recede and ebb away
in an exquisite, dying sweetness, as the angels
return to their heavenly abode. This orchestral
movement recurs in the opera, according
to the laws of dramatic fitness, and its melody
is heard also in the logos of Lohengrin, the
knight of the Graal, to express certain phases
of his action. The immense power which music
is thus made to have in dramatic effect
can easily be fancied.
A fourth prominent characteristic of the Wagner music-drama is that, to develop its full splendor, there must be a coöperation of all the arts, painting, sculpture, and architecture, as well as poetry and music. Therefore, in realizing its effects, much importance rests in the visible beauties of action, as they may be expressed by the painting of scenery, and the grouping of human figures. Well may such a gigantic conception be called the "Artwork of the Future."
Wagner for a long time despaired of the
visible execution of his ideas. At last the
celebrated pianist, Tausig, suggested an appeal
to the admirers of the new music throughout
the world for means to carry out the composer's
great idea, viz., to perform the "Nibelungen" at
a theatre to be erected for the purpose, and
by a select company, in the manner
of a national festival, and before an audience
entirely removed from the atmosphere of vulgar
theatrical shows. The plan has been so
far successful that it is expected to be
consummated in the spring of 1875, at Baireuth.
The performance of the "Ring der Nibelungen" will
cover four evenings, devoted successively to the
"Rheingold," "Die Walküren," "Siegfried,"
and "Götterdämmerung"
Those who are fortunate enough to witness
the production of this sublime art-work
will be able to realize in full what the union
of poetry and music may be made under the
best estate of both, so pregnantly hinted at
by Shakespeare: