Speranza
The following pages contain little if anything that is new, or
that
would be likely to interest those who are already at home in
Wagner's
work. They are intended for those who are beginning the study
of
Wagner. In spite of many books, I know of no Wagner literature
in
English to which a beginner can turn who wishes to know what Wagner
was
aiming at, in what respect his works differ from those of the
operatic
composers who preceded him. Some sort of Introduction appears
to me a
necessary preliminary to the study of Wagner, not because his
works are
artificial or unnatural, but because our minds have become
perverted by the
highly artificial products of the Italian and French
opera, so that a work of
Wagner at first appears to us very much as
_Paradise Lost_ or a tragedy of
Sophokles would appear to a person who
had never read anything but light
French novels. He must entirely change
the attitude of his mind, and the
change, although it be a return to
nature and truth, is not easy to
make.
Those who wish fully to understand Wagner's aims must read his
own
published works. I have not attempted to give his views in a
condensed
form, being convinced that any such attempt could only end in
failure.
Whenever it has been made, the result has been a caricature;
you
cannot separate a man's work from his personality. All that I could
do
was to endeavour to lay some of the problems involved, as I
conceive
them, before the reader in my own words.
[Greek: Theohus d' ephame eleountas aemas sugchoreutas te
kahi
choraegohus aemin dedo¯ke'nai to'n te Ap'ollo¯a kahi Mousas
kahi dhae
kahi tri'ton ephamen, ei' memnaemetha, Dionuson.]
A new work on Wagner requires some justification. It might be
urged
that, since the _Meister_ has been dead for some decades and
the
violence of party feeling may be assumed to have somewhat abated,
we
are now in a position to form a sober estimate of his work, to
review
his aims, and judge of his measure of success.
Such, however, is not my purpose in the following pages. I conceive
that
the endeavour to _estimate_ an artist's work involves a
misconception of the
nature of art. We can estimate products of
utility, things expressible in
figures, the weight of evidence, a Bill
for Parliament, a tradesman's
profits. But a work of art is written
for our pleasure, and all that we can
attempt is to understand it.
True, we must judge in a certain sense, we must
weigh and estimate
before we can arrive at understanding; but it is one thing
to meditate
in the privacy of one's own mind, quite another to publish
these
constructive processes as an end in themselves, to set up
critical
"laws" and expect that poets are going to conform to them.
Art, says Ruskin, is a language, a vehicle of thought, in
itself
nothing. Plato's teaching in the third book of his _Republic_
is
the same, and the idea of the secondary nature of art, of its
value
only as the expression of something else, of a human or moral
purpose
only fully expressible in the drama, is the nucleus of all
Wagner's
theoretical writing. In private conversation and in his letters
he
often spoke very emphatically. "I would joyfully sacrifice and
destroy
everything that I have produced if I could hope thereby to
further
freedom and justice."[1]
[Footnote 1: The episode which gave rise to this remark is too long
to
relate in the text, but is highly characteristic and instructive
for
Wagner's attitude towards art. It will be found in the sixth volume
of
Glasenapp's biography, p. 309.]
Let us clearly keep in mind the distinction here involved between
the
two elements of every work of art: matter and form, substance
and
technique, [Greek: onta] and [Greek: gignomena], Brahm and Mâyâ,
Wille
und Vorstellung, the emotional and the intellectual life of man,
or,
untechnically, what he feels and his communication of those
feelings
to others as a social being. With the first of these the critic
has
nothing to do; the matter is given; all he has to consider is
whether
it has found adequate expression--that is, to try to understand
the
language, that when he has mastered it he may help others to do
so
according to his ability. I do not say that the matter is one to
which
we are indifferent. On the contrary, it is far the more important
of
the two, since the thing expressed is prior to its expression. Only
it
is no concern of the critic, because we may fairly assume that if
the
technical expression is correct and intelligible the artist
has
already told us what he wishes to convey in the most perfect
language
of which that idea is susceptible, and that any attempt to put it
into
the lower and more prosy language of the critic would only weaken
and
distort the thought.
It does not seem to me that passions have abated very much, or
judgments
have become much more sober, since Wagner has left us. In
England at least
the ignorance and indifference which prevail among
the ordinary public are
still profound. In truth the seed which he
sowed has fallen upon evil soil;
his fate has been a cruel one. He,
the most sincere and transparent of men,
whose only wish was to be
seen as he actually was, has perhaps more than any
other great man
been the victim of misrepresentation, alike from his
senseless
persecutors and from his equally senseless adulators. While he
lived,
every imaginable calumny, plausible and unplausible, was invented
to
besmirch his character and his art. Now it is, in Germany at least,
no
longer safe to revile him on the ground of his technical
artistic
style. The days are long past when the terms "charlatan,"
"amateur,"
"artistic anarchist" could be applied to him with impunity, and it
is
fully recognized by all who have any title to speak that Wagner, so
far
from being a revolutionary destroyer, was, like all true
reformers--Luther,
for example, or Jeremiah or Sokrates--an extreme
conservative. Those who like
Walt Whitman preach libertinism in the
name of democracy do not want reform;
they are satisfied with things
as they are. Wagner battled, both in music and
in literature, for
_der reine Satz_--purity of diction as against the untidy
licence
which was then and still is fashionable among weak-kneed artists and
a
thoughtless public.[2]
[Footnote 2: It is perhaps still necessary to produce some warrant
for
these statements. The deep-rooted conservatism of Wagner's
character
is a prominent feature of all his literary work, and
especially
noticeable in his educational schemes, as, for example; the report
on
a proposed Munich school of music, with its text: "The business of
a
Conservatory is to conserve." On his musical diction the testimony
of
Prof. S. Jadassohn will probably be considered sufficient by
most
people. He writes: "Wagner's harmonies are clear and pure; they
are
never arbitrary, nor coarse nor brutal, but throughout
conscientious
and clean according to the strict rules of pure diction (_des
reinen
Satzes_). Consequently the sequences and combinations of the
chords
and the course of the modulation are easily followed by those who
know
harmony. Similarly, his polyphonic style is easily intelligible to
the
trained contrapuntist"--and more to the same effect, Jadassohn is
here
only expressing what every competent musician knows. Before the
first
performance at Bayreuth in 1876 Wagner's last word to the artists
was:
_Deutlichkeit_--"clearness"--a word which sums up all his
technical
teaching throughout his life.]
Mr. Hadow has truly observed that we have not yet learned to
treat
genius frankly, and either starve it with censure or smother it
with
irrational excess of enthusiasm. If the malicious
misrepresentations
and persecutions which Wagner endured during his lifetime
were the
outcome of ignorance, assuredly the hysterical raving of our day is
no
less ignorant and contemptible. I hear it said that in
England
"Wagnerism" is an attitude, and can only reply that it is so
in
Germany too. Among the cosmopolitan audiences who crowd the theatres
of
Dresden and Munich on a Wagner night and greet his works with
thundering
applause, there is probably not one person in a hundred who
really knows what
he sees and hears. Not that these people are not
perfectly sincere;
_something_ they have undoubtedly taken in;
the marvellous euphony and
balance of Wagner's orchestra under the
conductors we now have, the exquisite
grace of the melodic and
harmonic structure, and the lyric beauty of so many
scenes are
apparent to all, and will always awaken the boundless enthusiasm
of
those who go only to be diverted. But these are only the ornaments
of
the drama; to understand the drama itself requires a serious effort
on
the part of the hearer which few are prepared to make, a moral
sympathy
with the composer and receptive understanding of his aims of
which few are
capable.
We in England seem content to remain in darkness. I am not, of
course,
referring to the many competent men who have given serious
attention
to the works of Wagner; I am speaking of the general public.
The
English people has plenty of poetry in its heart, but our
attitude
towards German literature and art is not creditable to us as a
nation.
We who possess the finest literature ever produced by any
people,
whose Chaucers and Shakespeares and Popes and Byrons are the models
on
which the poets of other nations endeavour to form their
style,
scarcely think their literature worthy of serious consideration.
A
German boy when he leaves school has generally a pretty
close
acquaintance with Shakespeare, and knows at least something of
other
English authors and poets. An English boy at the same stage of
his
education has perhaps heard of Goethe and Schiller, but has
rarely
read any of their works. At the Universities it is no better. I
really
believe that in England Gounod's _Faust_ is better known
than
Goethe's! It would be impossible that such travesties of _Faust_
as
appear from time to time upon the English stage would be endured if
our
scholars and intellectuals were better informed. Towards ancient
languages,
except the two which are fashionable, we are just as
indifferent. It was no
less a person than Sir Richard Maine who
asserted that, except the blind
forces of nature, nothing exists in
the world which is not Greek in its
origin! Truly more things are
dreamed of in our philosophy than are in heaven
and earth! When great
scholars make such statements as this it is scarcely
surprising that
ordinary people should care little for the origins of their
own
language. The parents of modern English are not Greek but
Anglo-Saxon
and Scandinavian or Icelandic. Both these languages have a
literature
of the very highest rank, but are little studied in this country.
The
eighth-century English lyrics are amongst the finest in the
language.
As for Scandinavian, not every one in England is aware that
the
Icelanders are, and have been for a thousand years, the most
literary
people in the world;[3] that in one important branch of
literature,
that of story-telling, they are absolutely without a rival,
except in
the Old Testament. From these Scandinavian sources we have
received
the heritage which has grown into our magnificent language
and
literature, but we trouble our heads little about them and leave
them
to foreigners to study. Ignorance may perhaps be excusable; what
is
wholly inexcusable is the habit of some Englishmen of criticising
and
censuring the work of foreigners which they dislike because
they
cannot understand it. There is a certain section of the English
people
who seem to think that it shows patriotism and a becoming
national
pride to belittle the work of other nations and speak of it in
an
insolent tone of contempt. They habitually misrepresent
the
achievements of foreigners in order to make them appear
ridiculous.
Over twenty years ago a writer in one of our high-class
magazines
informed an astonished world that "the Wagner-bubble has burst!"
and
the preposterous nonsense has been repeated again and again in
one
form or another ever since. Quite recently we read in one of
our
leading English dailies the following sentences: "... Among many
of
the best-known critics there is a general consensus of opinion
that
with the completion of Strauss' important work [_Elektra_],
Wagnerism
will diminish in popularity.... For years and years vain
attempts have been
made to get away from Richard Wagner. Creative
musicians have long felt that
Wagner's great and never-to-be-forgotten
art no longer suited modern times"!
One feels inclined to ask whether
the writer looks upon musical composers as
racehorses to be pitted
against each other, or as religious creeds which must
destroy their
rivals in order to live.
[Footnote 3: Feeling some doubt as to whether this statement were not
an
exaggeration, I have submitted it before publication to my friend
Mr. Eirikr
Magnússon of Cambridge, whose profound knowledge of
European literature,
ancient and modern, needs no attestation from me.
He replies that, except for
the two centuries succeeding the Black
Death in 1402-4, the statement in the
text is quite correct. With that
reservation therefore I allow it to
stand.]
There is another and a graver charge to be brought against some
writers
whose works are popularly read in England, to which it will be
my duty to
return. I have said enough here to show the state of Wagner
criticism in this
country. Abroad it is little better. Wagner is
indeed fashionable. His works
are regularly performed in every capital
in Europe, and he has probably saved
the existence of the costly
_Hoftheater_ in Germany. But success, in the
sense in which he
understood it, he has not yet achieved. It is very
questionable
whether his influence has on the whole been for good, either
upon
musicians and dramatists, or upon the public. It is not his
fault.
Nothing would show more convincingly the utter inability of the
modern
public to appreciate the highest and best in art than the
literature
which has gathered round the great name of Wagner. In all the
vast
mass how much is there which was worth the writing, or can be
read
with any profit by reasonable people? I think that, putting
aside
purely technical works on music, stage-management, etc., the number
of
really good books could be counted on the fingers. The rest is
feeble
rhapsody on the one hand, malicious misrepresentation on the other.
Of
works of first-rate importance, works that really add anything solid
to
our knowledge, I only know one: Nietzsche's _Geburt der
Tragödie_. Of others
the best are mostly in French. Lichtenberger's
_R. Wagner_ is admirable so
far as it goes, but treats the
subject exclusively from the literary
standpoint. The small treatise
of our marvellous countryman, Mr. H. S.
Chamberlain, _Le drame
wagnérien_[4] (Paris, 1894), is thoughtful and
suggestive, and
quite worthy of close attention, as are also the works of
Kufferath,
Golther, etc. There may be a few more, mostly of small compass,
but
not many. Glasenapp's great biography, a work of astounding
industry,
and invaluable to the student, can scarcely be included among the
good
books because of its terrible literary style and its
fulsome
sentimentality. The magnificent work begun by the Hon. Mrs.
Burrell,
of which there is a copy in the British Museum, would have been
a
monumental biography had she lived to complete it, but it stops
when
Wagner is about twenty. Of the rest, the less said the better.
Of
works against Wagner I know of none that are even worth reading,
except
Hanslick, to whom I shall have occasion to return. It is much
to be regretted
that none of Wagner's opponents have ever stated their
case fairly and
soberly. There is much to be said, but assuredly it
has not been said by men
of the stamp of Nordau, who cites disgusting
accounts from French medical
journals in order to show his abhorrence
of what he considers Wagner's
immorality! Tolstoi is a writer of wide
authority among his followers, and
might be expected to feel some
responsibility for his utterances; yet he
thought it right to publish
his verdict to the world after having witnessed
_one_ very
inferior performance of a _portion_ of Siegfried! He is
often
appealed to as if he were an authority by the opponents of Wagner,
but
his utterances have no more weight than the thoughtless expressions
of
a Ruskin or a William Morris, which their biographers have thought
fit
to drag from the privacy of private letters or conversation
and
publish as their deliberate judgments. From Nietzsche at
least
something better might have been expected, but I can find little
in
his anti-Wagnerian writings except coarse vituperation and low
scandal.
There is no anti-Wagnerian literature worthy of the name.
There are plenty of
highly musical and artistic natures who honestly
dislike his art, and I am so
far able to sympathize with them as to
believe that an inestimable benefit
would be conferred upon all of us
if they would publish their objections in
sober and reasoned form. But
they do not; or if they do speak, they descend
to the slums.
[Footnote 4: Not his _Richard Wagner_, which is a more
popular
work.]
Such has been the response of the public through its literature to
the
man who expressly did not wish to be worshipped, but only to
be
understood. Assuredly there is yet plenty of room for good work to
be
done! The purpose of the following pages is criticism, not as
judging,
but as selecting. In choosing certain characteristics to show them
in
a different perspective from an altered point of view the critic
may
hope to help others to a better understanding of the art. I
have
endeavoured to do this for English readers in respect of
Wagner's
dramatic works through one of the most characteristic
and
representative of them. The problem resolves itself into two.
First
there is the general technical one, so fully treated by Wagner
himself
in his theoretical writings, whether music is capable of being used
as
a means of dramatic expression; and secondly, how far the endeavour
has
been successful in the particular work selected for illustration.
To treat
these problems satisfactorily it will be necessary for me to
go far beyond
the limits of music and dramatic art, and to enter
rather fully into
questions of psychology and metaphysics, which I
fear may discourage some
readers, but which cannot be shirked by those
who wish to form a judgment
based upon a more solid foundation than
their own personal taste. The mistake
made by nearly all writers on
Wagner hitherto has been to suppose that the
mere assertion of an
individual opinion has any value at all, however
illustrious the
person who holds it, however able his exposition. Of what use
can be
the assertion that a certain progression of chords is acceptable
and
pleasing to the healthy ear (even with the usual addition that all
who
do not think so are blockheads), when some other person
equally
competent asserts the contrary? Or how am I to persuade my
readers
that _Tristan und Isolde_ is what I hold it to be, the
loftiest
paean of pure and holy love ever conceived by a poet, when others
see
in it only a "story of vulgar adultery," steeped in sensuality?
The
moral law is the same to all men, and differences of judgment
upon
moral acts are due to imperfect understanding. But I cannot hope
to
make my own position clear without descending to the foundations of
all
art, of all life, without asking: what is drama? what are its
aims, and how
does it express them? what is human life which it
reflects? Wagner felt this
very strongly, and soon realized that an
ontological basis was required for
his own theories; that to reform
art he must reform human life. "Oh ye men,"
he exclaims passionately
in a letter: "feel rightly, act as you feel! be
free!--then we will
have art."
We may learn the true principles of criticism from Wagner
himself.
Truthfulness in literature is what correctness is in
_Vortrag_.
They are objectivity, the art of seeing things as they really
are,
clearness of vision, right understanding. The truthful
representation
of an artist as he really is does not preclude, but rather
stimulates,
enthusiasm, for we may believe that the true artist and the true
work
of art as he intended it are superior to the flattering creations
of
our own fancy.
Lessing observes that of ten objections raised by the critic, nine
will
probably have occurred to the author; that he himself will read a
passage
twenty times rather than believe that the writer contradicted
himself. Some
of our critics seem to proceed upon an opposite
principle and to reject a
thought at once if it does not seem to agree
with what they themselves have
thought, and they observe little
restraint in expressing their authoritative
judgment. One critic
speaks of Wagner meditating on problems "which any
clear-headed
schoolboy could quickly have settled for him"; we are not
surprised to
find the same critic sneering at Kant and Plato! Such writers
there
will always be, but a nation which tolerates them cannot expect
to
maintain an honourable place in the intellectual commonwealth.
The distinction so often made with a genius between the "man" and
the
"artist" has been justly ridiculed by Wagner himself. For the
truest
individuality of an artist is in his art, not when he leaves his
own
proper sphere and enters one that is foreign to him. Beethoven is
the
writer of symphonies and sonatas, not the suspicious friend
and
unmannerly plebeian. The _man_ is the same in both relations,
_i.e._
his character remains the same, only it manifests itself
differently under
changed conditions, and the difference lies not in
him, but in the point of
view from which we regard him. Let us bear
this in mind in considering Wagner
as he appeared away from his art.
A genius has been aptly likened to an astronomical telescope, which
is
able to scan the heavens, but is useless for things close at hand.
To
some extent this is true of Wagner, but less so than with most, and
not
in the sense in which it has been often asserted. The attacks
which have been
made upon Wagner's private character show little
discrimination, for it is a
simple truth that the particular vices of
which he has been accused are just
those from which he was singularly
free. No charge has been more audaciously
or persistently brought by
ignorant writers or believed by an ill-informed
public in England and
America than that of morbid sensuality. Just as
Wagner's dramas have
been called licentious, so his character has been
described as
sensual, in defiance of easily ascertainable facts. Not long ago
the
discovery was made that his health had been undermined by loose
living
when he was young. It is easy to invent such charges, for which
there
is not a particle of evidence, and unfortunately the reader is
not
always in a position to verify the authorities, and naturally
thinks
that the writer must have some ground for what he says. As a
rule
these statements have originated with Ferdinand Praeger's
book
_Wagner as I knew him_, a book which I am astonished to see
still
quoted in England, as if it were an authority. I have not seen it,
and
do not know what it contains. Its character was exposed by
two
Englishmen, Mr. H. S. Chamberlain and Mr. Ashton Ellis, soon after
its
publication in 1892, and it was consequently withdrawn
from
circulation in Germany by its publishers, Messrs. Breitkopf
und
Härtel. In England and America it still seems to be widely read,
and
is, more than any other single work, responsible for the false
notions
that are abroad about Wagner. Sensuality, that is in the
morbidly
sexual sense of the term, was no part of Wagner's character, nor
could
it be of the man who justly claimed that no poet had ever
glorified
women as he had done. His Sentas, Elsas, Brünnhildes, and I must
add
his Isoldes, rightly understood, afford the best answer to
such
accusations.
"But," it is said, "his music is unmistakably sensual." I must defer
it
to a future chapter to consider how far pure music, that is, music
apart from
words, is capable of expressing a specific human quality,
but may here
anticipate by saying that the nature of music is to
assimilate the elements
with which it is joined; the hearer may,
within certain broad restrictions,
put into it whatever he likes, and
will therefore hear in it the reflection
of himself. This is why
different people hear such different things in the
same music. If a
man hears sensuality in the _music_ of, let us say, the
second
act of _Tristan und Isolde_, it is his own interpretation.
Another
hears something very different, an anticipation of eternity,
of that world
beyond which the lovers are about to enter to be united
with each other and
with all nature in a higher love of which all
earthly love, with its
degrading garment of sensuality, is but the
debased image. The music by
itself will bear either interpretation;
each hearer will find in it just that
which he looks for and can
understand. But when the words are added the
meaning is clear. People
are not "sensual" when death is right before them,
as it is here. I do
not wish to be understood as meaning that Wagner excluded
sensuality
from his works, or that he did not treat the most universal and
most
ungovernable of human impulses in accordance with its character.
The
drama must include everything human, and when passionate sexuality
is
a necessary part of the dramatic development, Wagner no more shirks
it
than did Shakespeare or any other great dramatist. But Wagner
always
treats it with such consummate grace and refinement that it ceases
to
be repulsive and appears in its own uncorrupted beauty, as in
the
_Venus_ music and in the flower-maiden scene in _Parsifal_. Only
to
the impure are the senses impure.
An unbiassed consideration of all that is known about Wagner's life
will
acquit him of all the graver vices, unless a propensity for
living beyond his
income be reckoned as such. Whatever his faults
there was nothing
dishonourable or mean about them, and he is entitled
to the treatment that is
always accorded by one gentleman to another,
whether friend or enemy, so long
as he does not disgrace himself.
Surely it ought not to be necessary to
insist upon this before an
English public, but it has not always been
observed.
Similar is the charge of "ego-mania," that is, of overrating his
own
importance, so often heard. There cannot be any notion of
his
_over_rating his importance, for all are now agreed that
his
influence, whether for good or for bad, can scarcely be
overrated.
Only society requires, very rightly, that a man shall speak of
himself
and his achievements with a certain reticence, leaving it to others
to
judge of them. Nowhere that I know of has Wagner offended against
this
very proper rule. It has so long been the practice to represent
Wagner
as a man of overweening vanity, a man who tried to exalt himself
at
the expense of other artists, that some in England will not believe
me
when I say that there is no foundation whatever for such assertions.
I
only ask of those who think there is to read Wagner's own
published
writings, and to judge from them, not from what is said about him.
I
do not mean to say that he did not believe with the most
intense
conviction in his own idea of a new German dramatic art, uniting
the
separate arts in itself, and did not proclaim it as a thing of
the
first national importance; every serious reformer believes in
himself
in that sense. But that is not the same thing as asserting his
own
powers to realize it. With regard to these he speaks very modestly
of
himself as a beginner, a pioneer only. In fact the question of his
own
particular genius is, he says, irrelevant, and has nothing to do
with
the other one, adding rather cynically that genius is often given
to
the wrong people.
It is in this sense that I understand the famous words of his
speech
after the first performance of the _Ring_ at Bayreuth, in
1876,
which have been so often quoted in illustration of his arrogance:
"You
have seen what we can do; it is now for you to will. We now have
an
art if you will." Namely, thus: "Germany now has for the first time
an
indigenous drama, not imported from foreigners; if you accept it,
try
to develop and perfect it." Or shortly: "I and my friends have
done
what we can; the rest is for you to do." This seems to me the
natural
meaning of the words, and agrees with all his utterances at
other
times, namely, that the public must not leave it all to the
artist,
but must exert itself to cooperate with him. It has latterly
become
almost a fashion among some German authors to transgress all bounds
of
modesty in advertising themselves. Nietzsche, for example, leaves us
in
no doubt whatever as to what he requires us to think about him. But
nothing
of the kind will be found in Wagner.
The charge of "grapho-mania" is scarcely worth discussion, except
to
show what slender arguments have to be relied upon by those who try
to
prove Wagner insane. Ten, not _bulky_ volumes, as Nordau calls
them,
but volumes of very moderate dimensions, some 30 per cent. of
which are
accounted for by his dramatic works, are not a very large
allowance for a man
who lived seventy years, and was often under the
necessity of writing to eke
out his income. They are scarcely
sufficient to be regarded as an indication
of insanity. The fact is,
that Wagner, either as dramatist or as author, was
not a voluminous
producer. It is the quality, the intensity, of his work that
is
important, not its bulk. This is only another instance of the
amazing
indifference to the most easily ascertainable facts shown by
Wagner's
assailants, and of the truth that if you only assert a thing,
however
nonsensical, persistently enough, there will always be some who
will
believe it. I cannot be expected to go through in detail the
whole
string of aberrations which Nordau finds accumulated in Wagner.
They
are all of the same kind, and all equally fanciful.
The endeavours to prove Wagner a "degenerate" are professedly made
in
the name of science, so often a cloak for the most
unscientific
vagaries, by men who are disciples of the late Professor
Lombroso of
Florence. Lombroso was a serious man of science, and many of
his
investigations into the nature and indications of insanity
have
permanent value, but it is certain that he went much too far, and
his
views are only very partially accepted by those who are qualified
to
judge of them.[5] When a theory of insanity is made to include such
men
as Newton, Goethe, Darwin, and others who are generally supposed
to be the
very types of sober sanity, a Richard Wagner may well be
content to remain in
such company. We are reminded of Lombroso's own
story of the lunatic's reply
to one who asked when he was coming out
of the asylum: "When the people
outside are sane." In fact the
theories when pushed to their extreme
consequences become absurd.
There is nothing discreditable to a serious
student of science who in
the enthusiasm of discovery presses his inferences
beyond their valid
limits, since all theory must at first be more or less
tentative. Very
different is the case when these dubious theories are applied
by men
with very modest scientific acquirements, or with none at all,
to
injure the reputation of a man whom they dislike. We may then
fairly
ask, with Lichtenberger, on which side the degeneration is more
likely
to be. These are the men who bring science into discredit.
[Footnote 5: For a very fair estimate of his work, see an article in
the
_Times_, October 20, 1909.]
It would not have been worth my while to dwell at such length upon
the
calumnies of irresponsible writers did I not know that they
represent
the popular opinion among the less well-informed in England of
to-day,
as in Germany thirty or forty years ago. They begin with people
who
ought to know better, and in time find their way into the
magazines
and popular literature of the day, to be greedily read by a
public
which, next to a prurient divorce case, likes nothing so well
as
slander of a great man. We have heard much of late years about
the
decadence of the English Press, but editors know very well the
public
for whom they cater.
That Wagner's was one of those serene and universally lovable
characters
who live at peace with God and man it is far from me to
wish to convey. Such
men there are, and women, who seem lifted above
the meaner elements of human
existence, without envy, without
reproach, untouched by its iniquities,
unsullied by its vileness. Pure
themselves and self-contained they see no
guile in others, or if they
see it they notice it not. Who has not met with
such? who has not felt
their power? When such innate purity of soul is united
with high
intellectual gifts we have the noblest creation of nature, and to
have
been called "friend" by one such is the highest honour that life
has
to offer.
But Wagner was not one of these. His was a stormy
spirit--"The
never-resting soul that ever seeks the new." He likens himself
to a
wild animal tearing at its cage and exhausting itself with
fruitless
struggles. He could not make terms with falsehood and sophistry,
or
leave them to perish naturally, but lived in ceaseless defiance
of
them. He was a man who inspired intense, devoted love, or
intense
hatred, according to the people with whom he was dealing. With
his
moral character in itself we have indeed no concern, but it
seems
necessary to explain why so many high-minded men who knew
him
intimately, and loved him passionately, at last fell away from
him.
The common theory of Wagnerites, that they were actuated by
petty
motives of jealousy, and the like, cannot be entertained for a
moment.
With Nietzsche it may well be that ill-health and drugs had
begun
their fatal work in 1876; they may account for the violence of
his
anti-Wagnerian writings, but surely the cause of his aversion
lay
deeper. Similarly with Joachim. Even the noble Liszt, who had stood
by
him and battled so bravely for him through the years of his
deepest
distress, though he never failed in his admiration of Wagner's
art,
seems to have cooled towards him personally when he was in
prosperity.
His staunch band of Zurich friends one and all became to some
extent
estranged after his exile was annulled. His acknowledged hasty
temper
will not account for it; hastiness wounds, but in a generous
and
ardently loving nature it does not estrange.
The cause is, in my belief, not far to seek. It lay in the
domineering
spirit which is so noticeable in every act of his life, every
page of
his writings. His life was his art. He was above all things a man
of
action, and all who belonged to him in any relation whatever had
to
serve him in his art or cease to be his. His power must be
absolute;
talents, energies, life itself if necessary, must be surrendered
to
the service of that one supreme purpose. Many were the men and
women
who did not flinch from the sacrifice. I need only mention
musicians
like Richter, Cornelius, Porges, literati like Glasenapp and
Wolzogen.
Many, especially women, were ready to fling to the winds all
thought
of personal wellbeing, and life itself. Cosima, to save him and
his
art, sacrificed every worldly consideration. Ludwig of Bavaria did
the
same, and brought his country to the verge of revolution.
Singers,
like Hedwig Reicher Kindermann, literally gave their lives for
him.
And no less than this did he exact from all who aspired to be
his
disciples and supporters.
But Nietzsche's was a different character. He was Wagner's peer,
and,
though thirty years his junior, had his own purposes to
follow.
Nietzsche was, as he afterwards realized, under a delusion from
the
first. His highly organized musical nature had been taken
captive,
intoxicated by Wagner's music. But Nietzsche was a thinker, and it
is
contrary to the natural order that the man of thought should serve
the
man of action. Nietzsche was incapable of serving Wagner's art and
had
to leave him.
Was this a fault in Wagner? Who shall say? If it was, it was a
fault
which he shared with every earnest reformer who is not content
with
preaching, but enforces his precepts with action. Reform is
no
plaything; it cannot be achieved by listening to the well-meant
advice
of friends who know no higher goal than personal success, who have
no
glimmering of the motives that impel a great soul, who would fain
tell
the thunderbolt where it shall strike. Every great man lives alone;
he
has no friends and no disciples. His equals follow their own ends;
his
inferiors cannot breathe in the regions where he dwells. He must
rely
upon himself. Without this full dominion Wagner would not have
been
himself; he would never have founded Bayreuth, never have had
his
greater works performed, never even have composed them. And
this
brings us to the most conspicuous feature of his character, the
centre
of everything, namely, his uncompromising sincerity and
truthfulness,
qualities so magnificent in him that I doubt whether they have
ever
been equalled in any other, qualities which show Wagner no less
great
"as man" than he is "as artist."
It is certain--and no one knew it better than himself--that Wagner
might
easily have been successful from the first if he had liked. He
might have
been wealthy, popular, petted by the great, have lived in
the luxury that he
loved, at peace with all the world, if he had only
consented to traffic with
his art and to produce what the public
wanted. For assuredly his talent for
writing operas on the old lines
was not inferior to that of Meyerbeer or
Rossini. His _Rienzi_
was the greatest immediate success of his whole life
when grand
operas, of which it is the type, were fashionable, and a few
more
works of the kind would have raised him above all anxiety for
his
livelihood. This can scarcely be questioned now; it has been
asserted
again and again by those who most hated him, and who were in the
habit
of denouncing him as "past help" because he refused to listen to
them.
To do so he would have had to sacrifice all that he held sacred.
He
had "hitched his waggon to a star," and deliberately chose
poverty,
exile, public calumny and ridicule, domestic unrest, rather than
allow
the purity of his art to be sullied by departing for an instant
from
the ideals after which he strove. Witness the events of the
fateful
seventies, when his financial straits were perhaps at their
worst,
when all the powers of Germany, statesmen, theatrical
Intendants,
press, singers, seemed in league together to thwart the project
of
Bayreuth upon which his all depended; when even King Louis of
Bavaria
cooled for a time; when Bülow and Liszt had withdrawn their help,
and
Nietzsche had seceded in horror and despair; when the first effort
of
Bayreuth had left a ruinous debt, and the failure of
the
_Patronat-Vereine_ shut off the last faint ray of hope. Well
might the
_Meister_, now advancing in age, have thought of
accepting one of the
dazzling offers which repeatedly reached him from
Russia, from America, from
Vienna, Berlin, Leipzig, and other places.
But he only saw in them lures to
tempt him into degrading his art by
commercial speculation with all its
paraphernalia of advertisement and
other sordid abominations. Never once did
his courage falter; no
thought of any concession, however small, however
seemingly
reasonable, which he held to be dishonourable to his art ever found
a
place in his mind. The surrender of _Die Walküre_ alone would
probably
have turned the tide in his favour, and he was pressed for it
by most of the
great theatres, but in vain. To mutilate the
_Ring_ was in his opinion to
dishonour it and prepare the way for
its being misunderstood. So far from
adopting any one of the many
courses which could not fail to lead to success
and popularity we find
him occupied during this time in coaching singers
personally, in
building his theatre, and devising schemes for a school of
technique
where musicians, and especially singers, could learn the true
methods
of their art, naturally--though perhaps imprudently--believing
that
before his works could be understood as he meant them they must
be
rightly represented. Without funds! without patronage! with nothing
but
his own determined will! Can we wonder that the world's head was
turned by
such a gigantic personality?
Let those who call Wagner self-willed and perverse because he could
not
conform to _their_ notions of what is right for an artist,
who attempt to
measure an infinite mind by the paltry canons of
self-interest, reflect upon
the harvest that we are now reaping from
his unswerving loyalty to his art.
To him alone, and to the conductors
whom he trained, do we owe the almost
perfect performances of our
modern orchestras. It has been truly observed
that Wagner's own
immensely difficult works are better performed at the
present day than
were the far easier works of his predecessors before he
came. The
Richters and Mottls and Schuchs of our day are a very different
race
from the Reissigers and Lachners and Costas of a past generation.
It
was Richter who taught us in London how a symphony of Beethoven
ought
to sound; before he came, performances were approved which the
present
day would not tolerate. He, as well as his great compeers, was
brought
up in the school of Wagner, the essence of which lies
in
_correctness_, in rendering the work as the composer intended it,
with
conscientious attention to every detail, not only of notes, but
of rhythm,
tempo, phrasing, dynamics, instead of the slovenly muddling
which then passed
for breadth of style, and the substitution of the
conductor's own
subjectivity for that of the composer. It has been
well expressed in a few
incisive words by one of the greatest of the
school: "The privilege of an
interesting subjectivity is given to few,
its expression will always give
evidence of that instinctive logic
which is a necessary condition of
intelligibility."[6] Call Wagner
perverse, dislike his art, say that his
dramas are chaos and his music
discord--all this you have a right to do; but
you cannot refuse your
homage to his rectitude of purpose, his courageous and
resolute
struggle for the ideals which were before him.
[Footnote 6: I have translated rather freely so as to give the
general
sense, as von Bülow's German is not always very easy to follow.
It
will be found in his comments upon Beethoven's _Fantasie_, Op. 77.]
This is the secret of what is known as the modern German
spirit--close
attention to every detail, faithfulness to the work in hand,
with the
conviction that no part of the organism is so trifling as not to
be
vital. This it was, and not bookish education, that inspired the
German
army in its victories of 1870-71; this spirit it was that
enabled the
Meiningers in 1882 to fill our Drury Lane Theatre to
overflowing with
performances of our own Shakespeare in a foreign
language. At the present day
it still continues to actuate German
trade and German handicrafts, while we
English in our blindness think
to dispose of it by cant phrases and
sneers.
To the nearer friends of his home-circle Wagner's personality must
have
been singularly attractive, from the intelligent sympathy which
he showed
with everything human, and from the irrepressible gaiety
which never forsook
him for long. In times of stress it helped those
around him to tide through
the most crushing disasters.
Genius is not a thing apart by itself, severed from the rest of
the
world. Its one distinguishing mark is its intense humanity. If I
may
speak in paradox, the true poet is more truly ourselves than we
are.
The astronomical telescope is constructed upon the same principles
as
the terrestrial one, only it is more powerful and more perfectly
made.
Not only the lenses, but all the details of the mechanism are
more
highly finished; more thought and more labour are bestowed upon
them;
the parts are more skilfully co-ordinated together; it is a
better
instrument. We do wrong to genius in connecting it with
mental
aberration; it is more normal, more perfectly human, than we are;
more
human in its virtues, in its faults, in its follies, above all, in
its
consummate beauty; only with its greater perfection the
organism
becomes more delicate, and is more easily injured. For genius
is
exposed to heavier strains than we are, because it is in
uncongenial
surroundings. If one part happen to be imperfect, if, as we say,
"a
screw be loose," the injury is more serious than in ordinary
natures,
and the exquisite adjustments may suffer in the rude handling of
a
stupid and clumsy environment, wrecking the whole system. This, and
not
natural proclivity, is the reason why genius so often shows a
tendency to
eccentric and abnormal conduct. The fault is with society,
which feels
instinctively that those who rise too high in excellence
must be crushed. And
this is the theme of every real tragedy. Othello,
Lear, Njál, Grettir,
Clarissa Harlowe, the Maid of Orleans, Antigone,
Prometheus, and, as I hope
to show, Tristan and Isolde, these are but
a few among those who must perish
from no fault in themselves, but
because they are too noble for their
surroundings.
"The greater the man, the greater his love." We should not set
the
genius on a pedestal to be first gaped at and then ridiculed. He
needs
before all else our love and our sympathy; for his nature
is
essentially that of a child, and, childlike, he craves for human
love
as the first necessity of his life. To those who set up an idol
of
their own fancy and worship that as his image, he will be cold
and
repellent, but to those who know him as he really is he will
return
their love with all the warmth and purity of his childlike nature.
Two
things are intolerable to a healthy-minded child--rough brutality
and
mawkish caressing; Wagner was fated to endure a full share of both.
It
is touching to read of Wagner's simple affection for those who
were
around him in humble capacities. Every one who has read his life
knows
of his kindliness to his domestic servants. Now it is the
village
barber who is "gar zu theuer," now his gondola-man in Venice. His
love
for animals has been perhaps too much dwelt upon by his
biographers,
but it is very characteristic.
Mankind is not divided into Wagnerites and anti-Wagnerites; nor is
it
divided into Romanists and Protestants, nor into theologians
and
rationalists, nor into Tories and Radicals, nor into any other of
our
familiar party divisions. The true division is into great men
and
small, lovers of truth and sophists, honest men and thieves.
Thieves
and sophists wrangle, but the great and true "join hands through
the
centuries," and between them is eternal peace.
Nothing probably has more tended to discredit Wagner's art
with
thoughtful people than the statement sometimes made by his
following
that he has created a new art. Wagner himself never made any
such
claim. When he speaks of a new indigenous art of pure German
growth,
he is merely contrasting it with the foreign art--Italian operas
and
French plays--upon which Germans had lived hitherto. When an art,
like
music or the drama, begins to flourish on a new soil, it is certain
to
exhibit new features, to show new developments, so that with respect
to
its external physiognomy it may in a sense be called new; but far
truer is
the very opposite statement, that Wagner's art is as old as
art itself; its
greatness lies not in any novelty of invention, but in
his having developed
the old forms into something dreamed of by his
predecessors but never
achieved before.
We often hear about Wagner's "theories," as if he had composed
his
art-works in accordance with some theoretical scheme. After a
fairly
close study of Wagner's writings extending over a great many years
I
must confess my inability to say what his peculiar theories were.
The
employment of music as an element of the dramatic expression was
no
invention of Wagner. What he found out was how to maintain
the
different elements, words, acting, music, in a natural relation to
one
another in the drama. This is art, not theory; we learn it from
his
works, not from his writings. It is true that Wagner's
writings
contain many very interesting and valuable speculations on
artistic
problems. If these are his theories, he must have abjured them
the
moment that he set to work composing. In _Oper und Drama_,
for
example, he has a very interesting discussion on the value
of
consonants in the German language and on the characteristic
difference
between the expression of the consonant and that of the
vowel,
arriving at the conclusion that alliteration is better suited for
the
German musical drama than the imported rime. Further, he
shows--rather
convincingly, I think--that the true subject for the drama
is
mythical. But not long after this he wrote _Tristan und Isolde_,
in
which alliteration is generally discarded for rime or blank verse,
and a
little later _Meistersinger_, which is a comedy of domestic
life, and has
nothing to do with mythology. Then there are the
_Leitmotivs_ which are used
so methodically in the _Ring_
that it would seem there must have been some
preconceived system. But
Wagner never once mentions _Leitmotivs_ in his
writings, nor did
he invent them. They have been dragged into the light by
von Wolzogen,
and whatever theories we have about them are due to him, not
to
Wagner.
There is indeed one doctrine which runs through all his writings,
and
may be taken as their general text, namely, that art is not
an
amusement but a serious undertaking, consequently that purity
and
truthfulness are just as necessary in art as in actual life. It is
no
excuse for the artist who deceives to say that his work is
"only
poetry," and has no serious significance. He carried this
exalted
notion of the mission of art almost to excess, if such a thing
is
possible with so noble an idea, when he insisted upon art being
a
matter of national concern. All the serious mistakes which he made
in
his life, those acts which the sober judgment of his most
ardent
admirers must condemn as ill-advised, sprang from his desire
to
identify art with national life, for example, his part in the
Saxon
revolution of 1849, his proceedings in Munich, in 1865,[7]
his
attempts to influence Bismarck, etc.
[Footnote 7: See Note I. at the end of this chapter.]
Wagner's literary works are not easy reading; his German style,
though
grammatical and idiomatic, is generally very involved and
obscure,
often turgid. There is a want of self-discipline about the
thought,
and he is too hasty in committing ill-digested thoughts
ill-arranged
to print, while his style is full of tedious mannerisms, such as
his
constant use of futile superlatives for positives, the
constant
occurrence of certain words not always in their natural meaning,
such
as _Bewusstsein_, _Erlösung_, etc. It is in marked contrast
to the
lucid and finished workmanship of his dramatic and musical
composition. His
dislike for theoretical exposition, and the
constraint under which he wrote
are too manifest in his language.
Nevertheless, the reader who perseveres
will be rewarded. The
fascination which Wagner's writings have for thinking
minds is due to
the importance of the problems involved. As Dannreuther has
observed,
wherever Wagner was brought to a stand a social problem lies
buried;
the problems which engage his attention are those which lie at
the
root of all art and all life. We may not always approve of
the
solutions which he offers, but we cannot fail to be interested. And
as
we travel on we gradually become aware of brilliant spots of
verdure,
passages here and there--sometimes sudden flashes, sometimes
whole
pages where the language and the thought are equally remarkable.
What,
for example, could be more admirable than this description of
Mozart?
His artistic nature was as the unruffled surface of
a clear watery
mirror to which the lovely blossom of
Italian music inclined to see, to
know, to love itself
therein. It was but the surface of a deep and
infinite
sea of longing and desire rising from fathomless depths
to
gain form and beauty from the gentle greeting of the
lovely flower bending,
as if thirsting to discover
in him the secret of its own nature.[8]
Could any words give more concisely the peculiar character of the
much
misunderstood Mozart, "the most delicate genius of light and
love,"
"the most richly gifted of all musicians"? Does it not tell us
more
than all the outpourings of Oulibichef?
[Footnote 8: _Ges. Schr._ (1872), iii. p. 304.]
Or this, in speaking of the formation of the opera and the demand
for
better libretti after the period of Spontini?
The poet was ashamed to offer his master wooden
hobbies when he was
able to mount a real steed and
knew quite well how to handle the bridle, to
guide
the steed hither and thither in the well-trodden
riding-school
of the opera. Without this musical
bridle neither musician nor poet would
have dared to
mount him lest he should leap high over all the fences
away into his own wild and beautiful home in nature
itself.[9]
I must apologize for these extracts to those of my readers who are
able
to follow the original, and I hope that others may yet feel
something of the
warmth of Wagner's language even in the feeble shadow
of a very free
paraphrase. Many more might be gathered from his works
to show how vivid and
forcible was Wagner's prose when he once threw
off the restraint of cold
logical reasoning. Other passages well
worthy of perusal as specimens of his
better style are the description
of the theatrical sunset in _le Prophète_,
and especially the
admirably worked-out metaphor of the _Volkslied_ as a wild
flower
in vol. iii. of his collected works, pp. 309 and 372 seq.
[Footnote 9: _Ges. Schr_., iii, p. 298.]
Very different views have been expressed about Wagner in his capacity
of
philosopher. To some he appears as a verbose dilettante totally
unable to put
two ideas logically together, while others look up to
him as a teacher of the
profoundest truths. I cannot say that either
view is wrong. On the one hand
he possessed the deep insight which is
the first qualification for a
philosopher, but is found in so few; on
the other he lacked the patience to
express himself logically, feeling
that in his art he wielded a far more
powerful means of persuasion
than logic. Those who persevere in studying his
writings until they
master what he really was aiming at cannot fail at last
to admit that
as philosopher he is at least suggestive, as art-critic he is
amongst
the very first of all times, worthy of a place beside
Plato,[10]
Lessing, Ruskin.
[Footnote 10: See Note II. at end of this chapter.]
A critical discussion of only the more important of the problems
raised
by Wagner would require not one volume but several. For the
purpose of this
book, which is only to help readers in understanding
his works, I must
confine myself to the one which directly bears upon
his artistic production,
namely, that of the organic union of all the
arts into one supreme art, which
as their crown and completion may be
designated "art," as a universal, in
distinction from the separate
individual "arts." Such art, [Greek: kat'
e'xochaen], can only be the
drama, which already holds a position of its own
above all the other
arts from the fact that these only _depict_ or
_describe_
while the drama _represents_; its characters actually enact
the
events to be expressed, whence the expression is marked by
a
directness and vividness not possible to the other arts. The
natural
tendency which different arts show to unite and support each other
is
evident in many familiar phenomena, as, for example, illustrated
books.
Lessing, in his luminous essay, has traced the limits of the
arts of
depicting (painting and sculpture) and of describing (poetry).
Painting with
him is the art of rest, poetry that of movement.
Wagner's theory asserts that
each art, when it reaches its natural
limits, tends to call in the help of
another art to express what lies
beyond its own domain. If the two are able
to coalesce so as to become
organically one, it will be found that the
expressive power of each
has been enormously enhanced by the union, just as
the union of a man
with a woman in marriage enhances the value of each for
the community.
With Lessing painting and sculpture are determined by the law of
beauty
(_Schönheit_); poetry is the wider art, including all the
elements of
painting, but not bound by the same restrictions. Who can
forget his fine
contrast of the howling Philoktetes in _Sophokles_ with
the gently sighing
Laokoon, both in mortal agony, but the latter unable
to express his pain
because, being in marble, he dared not distort his
countenance? With Wagner
the notion of beauty (_Schönheit_)[11]
belongs by its very definition
exclusively to the arts that address the
sense of sight, painting and
sculpture, and from them it has been
transferred to music, but as a metaphor
only. To speak literally of
"beautiful music" would be a contradiction in
terms.
[Footnote 11: It should be noted that the German and English
words,
having a totally different origin, differ somewhat in
meaning.
"_Schönheit_" comes from "_schauen_," and has therefore
reference
to the sense of sight, while "beauty" is from the root of
_bene_, _bonus_,
and was originally a moral conception, not
a sensual one at all. In modern
language the meaning of the two words
is practically identical, but the
distinction is very important for
the understanding of Wagner. _Schönheit_
with him means
_sensual_ beauty.]
The one aim of dramatic technique must always be to obtain the
utmost
clearness, truthfulness, and completeness of _expression_. I
must
confess that many years ago, when I first began the study of
Wagner,
filled with the enthusiastic Hellenism of Schiller, I was not a
little
startled at Wagner's apparent insistence upon truthful expression
at
the expense of beauty, and could not but feel that it was
contradicted
by every movement of his music. No doubt many others have felt
the
same hesitation; but there really is no cause for alarm. Wagner's
is
the true doctrine. Let us turn for a moment to another art, that
of
architecture, where the line of demarcation between decoration
and
construction is easy to recognize. Wagner's position, if applied
to
architecture, would be that the builder has only to consider how
to
construct in the best possible way to attain the purpose for which
the
building is intended, and elegance of external appearance must
be
subservient to that. If he do this skilfully, so that every part
is
seen to unite harmoniously with all the others to form an
organic
whole, there will emerge quite of itself a gracefulness, an
artistic
beauty, founded in truth, which are high above all
intentionally
constructed decoration. It is the beauty and truth of nature,
that of
adaptation to an end. There is no question of sacrificing
euphony,
melody, or anything at all; on the contrary, the doctrine
declares
that by right adaptation the expressive power and beauty of every
part
will be enhanced. The notion that Wagner's music is unmelodious
had
its origin in the bad musical ears of his early critics.
The arts of design, i.e. painting, sculpture, and the kindred arts,
are
in space alone, and movement is excluded from them. The arts of
expression,
gesture, poetry, and music are all arts of movement in
time. The first named,
therefore, must necessarily take external
beauty (_Schönheit_) as their sole
guide and must confine their
attention exclusively to the superficial
appearance of the objects
they imitate. They can only arrive at the inner
character indirectly,
through its external manifestation, and in the hands of
an inferior
artist the step is an easy one to pretence and falsehood.
Defective
construction can easily be hidden beneath an outer covering
of
graceful forms which distract the eye from noticing the weakness
and
falsehood beneath. We need only look around us at the decoration
of
any modern drawing-room to find gross examples of such perversion
of
art. This explains Wagner's mistrust--noticeable especially in
his
earlier writings--of the arts of design with their principle
of
beauty. An artist who possesses true poetic inspiration will be in
no
danger of falling into errors of this kind; with him external beauty
is
expression of inner goodness, as it is in nature, who never covers
up defects
by external ornament.
We have therefore to recognize two distinct kinds of beauty in art,
two
kinds of pleasure that we experience: external, with which
painting and
sculpture are alone directly concerned--beauty in the
narrow sense; and inner
or organic. Wagner has expressed it in a
sentence which defies even a free
translation. Speaking of the lovely
melodies of the Italian opera he says:
"_Nicht das schlagende Herz
der Nachtigall begriff man, sondern nur ihren
Kehlschlag_." Men
cared only for the pleasing sound of the nightingale's
voice, nothing
for the beating heart from which it sprang.
We are now able to understand his famous doctrine that the drama is
the
end, music the means, and therefore secondary. In the Italian
opera the
relation was reversed; music was made the end, the drama
being only a vehicle
for the music. This is dramatically wrong, and
has led to a false and
unnatural form of art; in the drama music can
only be a means of dramatic
expression.
It is necessary here to enter a caution against a very
serious
misunderstanding into which many of Wagner's critics have fallen,
a
misunderstanding very natural to those who look upon the drama as
a
literary production. It has been supposed that Wagner intended
to
subordinate the music to the poetry, as if the function of music
were
to illustrate and vivify the more definite thought contained in
the
words. This view has been held by many critics, from
Aristotle
onwards. It was the view of Gluck, and will be found formulated in
the
_épître dédicatoire_ prefixed to his _Alceste_. Wagner's theory
is
essentially different and is peculiarly his own. With him the
_drama_
denotes, not the text-book, but the actual performance on the
stage,
in which there are three co-ordinate elements, acting, words,
and
music, not one of which is subordinate to the others, but all of
equal
value, expressing different sides of the dramatic subject-matter.
Of
the inability of words in themselves to inspire music, he is
very
emphatic: "No verses of a poet, not even of a Goethe or a
Schiller,
can determine the music. The drama alone can do this, i.e. not
the
dramatic poem, but the actual drama as it moves before our eyes as
the
visible counterpart of the music."
In order to be effective the union of the three elements must
be
_organic_, and I must now explain what is meant. When we speak of
a
work of art as an _organism_ we mean that the different parts
of which it is
composed co-operate together towards the purpose of the
whole in such a way
that not one of them is superfluous or could be
dispensed with. It resembles
in this respect the products of nature,
and life, which is only a complex
form of organized activity. In the
higher natural products, especially those
we speak of as
_living_, the single parts are not dead weights, but
are
themselves organisms, containing within them individual and
complete
systems of living forces, acting independently, and at the same
time,
as subordinate units contributing to the purpose of the whole, so
that
shortly we may say that, as each part is conditioned by the whole,
so
the whole is conditioned by the single parts. When a person loses
a
limb, and has it replaced by an artificial one, his first impression
is
of the enormous weight of the new limb, although it may only weigh
about a
quarter of the old one. This is explained by the fact that the
new limb is a
dead weight, whereas the former one was a living
organism. That is to say,
when he lifted it, the nervous impulses
transmitted from the brain were
sustained and enforced by forces
within the limb itself; being alive it
_helped_ in the effort,
whereas the mechanical limb, however perfect its
adaptation, will
always remain a piece of dead mechanism, a separate thing
from the
body to which it is attached and simply opposing its own inertia
to
the nervous effort.
In the _mechanical_ joining together of parts, each remains
isolated; if
one be abstracted the others remain as they were, while
in an _organic_ union
they combine to a whole, and if one be
withdrawn the whole is destroyed, or
at least vitally impaired. This
furnishes us with a criterion for the
technical construction of every
work of art, whatever it be; each single part
must contribute its
share towards the whole; there must be nothing
superfluous. The work
has an idea to express; if we find (in a drama, for
example) that no
scene, no single speech even, or sentence, can be omitted
without
impairing the work as a whole, and weakening its expression, then
the
work is technically as perfect as it can possibly be made; its
value
will then depend only on that of the idea to be expressed.
Now let us turn to Wagner's criticism of the sunrise scene in
_le
Prophète_, which I mentioned a few pages back, in the first part
of
_Oper und Drama_.[12] Here was a unique opportunity for a
great
dramatic artist. After the representation, not unskilfully
contrived,
of the victorious career of a young and aspiring hero, in the
supreme
moment of his destiny, the sun rises, adding its glory to his
triumph,
as if the very heavens were shedding their blessing upon the deeds
of
a noble man;--so it might have been. But Meyerbeer and Scribe
care
nothing for that; such is not the effect either felt by the
audience
or intended by the poet. The latter had nothing higher in his
mind
than a grand spectacular effect, which may be omitted without the
rest
of the drama being any the worse, and the result is in the worst
sense
theatrical, but not poetic--"effect without a cause."
[Footnote 12: _Ges. Schr., iii, p. 372.]
Compare with this the scene in the third act of _Parsifal_. The
verdant
landscape is here no mere theatrical decoration; if it were,
we should
scarcely go into a theatre to see what can be seen in far
greater perfection
in any green place on a spring morning. It is the
dramatic representation of
an idea perhaps suggested to Wagner by
Goethe's _Faust_, but as old as
Christianity itself. The task is
achieved; the spear has been regained, and
all nature smiling in its
flowery robes rejoices in the redemption of that
Easter morning; even
the withered flower-maidens add their strains to the
universal chorus.
How is such a miracle possible? Only by music in organic
union with
the dramatic situation. Persuasive as a living person it is able
to
carry us into realms far beyond those of language and reason, to
the
realm of wonder. The decorations of the Grand Opéra are as
artificial
and mechanical as modern dress; they are imposed by the fashion of
the
day, the caprice of the luxurious, and stand in no relation to
the
body to which they are fitted.[13]
[Footnote 13: Those who are interested in the subject will find
some
admirable observations in Lessing's _Hamburger Dramaturgie_,
11tes.
and 12tes. Stück, where the critic compares the ghost of Ninus
in Voltaire's
_Semiramis_ with the ghost in _Hamlet_. He
condemns the former because it is
nothing more than a poetical
machine, while Shakespeare's is one of the
persons of the drama. His
position is essentially the same as
Wagner's.]
The loose construction of the Italian opera has at least one
advantage;
it can be trimmed to suit the local exigencies of
performance. With the new
drama this was impossible. Wagner's
insistent refusal to permit any
mutilation of his work always appeared
to Intendants and Impresarii who were
anxious to meet him halfway like
monstrous egotism. What Rossini and
Meyerbeer had always consented to
without the smallest hesitation might, they
thought, content a Richard
Wagner. The reports of the Intendants to their
respective Governments,
of Lüttichau in the forties, of Royer in Paris in
1861, show how far
the authorities were from understanding the nature either
of the work
which they were undertaking or of the man with whom they had to
deal.
Rossini and Meyerbeer had never had any other aim than their
own
personal success; with Wagner the integrity of his art was far
above
all personal considerations. On this point no concession on
the
composer's side was possible. You may take five shillings out of
a
sovereign and there still remain fifteen shillings, but if you take
a
wheel from a watch the whole mechanism is destroyed; it was just
this
that distinguished his productions from operas, and in conceding
the
principle that they might be trimmed he would have
surrendered
everything.
It might seem superfluous to have dwelt so long upon a point which,
when
clearly laid out, can scarcely be controverted, were it not that
it has been
continually misunderstood, not only by nearly everybody at
the present day,
but even by critics of the rank of Gluck, Goethe, and
Grillparzer. To speak
either of music as enforcing the words or of the
words as forming a basis for
musical expression is to place one of
them--in the former case music, in the
latter the words--in an
inferior position towards the other, whereas they are
organic parts of
the whole, and co-equals. Wherever either principle is
adopted it will
result in that very looseness of construction which is the
vital
infirmity of the Italian opera. And the poetry will be of the
kind
fashionable with some literary people under the name "lines
for
music," the principle of which seems to be Voltaire's: _Ce qui
est
trop sot pour etre dit, on le chante_. Once the principle of
organic
unity is conceded as the first and most vital condition of a
work of art, the
rest of Wagner's doctrine follows directly. The
governing whole is the drama,
the thing to be enacted in its actual
representation on the stage, and the
different elements, gesture,
music, words, are the instruments of its
expression, to be so
co-ordinated together that each shall express just that
which it alone
is able to express and no more. The first outcome of the union
when
rightly and skilfully effected is to impart the one quality which
is
the final and only aim of all artistic technique--clearness
of
expression. The new drama can represent not only higher ideas, but
can
express them more intelligibly than that which uses words alone.
It will now perhaps be asked why these three particular arts and
no
others have been selected for dramatic purposes. Because they are
the
three ways in which all living beings utter their thoughts. They
have
belonged together from the beginning, and still do so; they
have
parted company for a time, but have never been divorced.
Before considering this it will be well for me to explain some
terms
which I shall have to use in the following. Poetry has commonly
been
divided into "lyric", "epic," and "dramatic"; these terms answer
to
three different phases of expression. Lyric poetry is the
purely
subjective emotion of the poet uttering itself in words. Epic
poetry
on the other hand deals with things and people external to the
poet.
The drama is, as we have seen, not poetry at all; the actors
perform
the acts themselves, using words only to explain the reasons for
their
acts; dramatic poetry therefore involves both lyric and epic
elements.
The most primitive, most natural, and simplest means by which a
living
being can utter itself is gesture--action. It is not necessary
to
speculate on prehistoric conditions. We need only observe the
world
around us, the behaviour of our friends and
acquaintances,
particularly those of South-European blood, to recognize how
direct
and eloquent is the expression of gesture. On the stage a
simple
series of dramatic actions can be fully represented by gesture
and
scenery alone with a very high intensity of emotional expression.
All movement in nature is rhythmic. I need not trouble my readers
with
the evidences of a fact which is well known in science, but will
refer
them to the lucid demonstration in Herbert Spencer's
_First
Principles_, Pt. II., ch. 10.
Rhythmic gesture then, or dancing, is the most primitive art, and it
is
purely lyric, i.e. subjective. It is very important to bear this
fact of
dancing, of which acting is only a species, as the primitive
form of art
before our minds. It is common to men and animals. I have
often wondered
whether the extraordinary development of Wagner's
histrionic faculty did not
stand in some mysterious relation to the
close sympathy which existed between
him and that most consummate of
all actors--the dog.
The vital activity of the throat and vocal cords becomes sound; song
may
therefore be considered as a peculiarly specialized form of
gesture, but with
the radical difference that as a vehicle of
expression it addresses the ear,
not the eye. The fact that it enters
the brain through a different channel
gives the art of sound an
entirely different character from that of gesture
proper; moreover,
from being in time only, not in space, it is apprehended
more
immediately by the inner sense, and the impression received is
more
intimate, more forcible. Still it retains the same lyric or
subjective
character.
It was, I believe, Lord Monboddo who first observed that
inarticulate
sound, music in its most primitive form, is the earliest form
of
utterance, and is prior to language. Lord Monboddo's researches
into
the origin and progress of language (1773) were valued so highly
by
Herder that they were at his instance translated into German.
The
conclusion at which he arrived, that the most primitive form
of
utterance is not language but music, that language grew out of
song
just as the art of writing grew out of picture-painting, is
especially
valuable from the fact that it was afterwards adopted by
Charles
Darwin.[14]
[Footnote 14: Descent of Man, Pt. III., ch. 19. The whole of that
part
of the chapter may be read in this connection. Unfortunately,
the
speculations are somewhat vitiated by the _idée fixe_ of
modern
science that everything must be referred to "courtship."
i.e.
sexuality.]
The "music" which Darwin and Lord Monboddo conceive as the
vocal
expression of primitive man is of course not the
highly-wrought
product which we now understand under that term; we may
suppose it to
have been _rhythmic_ but not _metric_. It was nearer to
the
cries of wild animals, and to some it may seem at first absurd
to
describe such sounds as music at all. I do not think so; on
the
contrary I find in the cries of some animals and many birds all
the
essential qualities of music. They have tone, rhythm, cadence, in
a
very high degree, and also melody, though vague and rudimentary.
The
essential difference between melody and mere succession of
sounds
consists in its being intelligible, that is, in its conforming to
a
scale or musical scheme of some sort, but that scale is not
necessarily
the one recognized in modern music. Our ears are so
accustomed to associate
melody with a certain diatonic scale, and with
accompanying harmony, actual
or potential, that it is very difficult
for us to comprehend as melody
successions which do not conform to
that scheme, as, for example, the
melodies of Oriental nations, the
scales of which are far more complex and
difficult to understand than
ours. It is a very remarkable fact that while
the course of evolution
is generally from simpler to more complex organisms,
that of the
musical scale is just the reverse. Primitive scales are
highly
complex, and involve intervals not appreciable by us as melody;
with
time they gradually become simpler; and in the diatonic
scale,
especially in its most modern developments, where the
distinction
between major and minor tends to become effaced,[15] we seem to
have
reached the limit, and the scale is reduced to the simplest
possible
numerical relations. However this may be, I know that to a person
who
has lived in close converse with nature and possesses a musical
ear
the cries of wild animals and birds are full of melody in the
strict
sense, though it is rudimentary and different from that of
our
concert-rooms. And it is reasonable to suppose that man, when he
first
emerged with far more highly organized faculties than any beast,
would
gradually raise his musical expression into something
higher,
something more melodious, than that of other creatures.
Particularly
as his reason developed he would devise a scale; the rhythms
would
become more definite and at the same time more varied and complex.
The
result of these improvements would be to make his utterances
more
intelligible.
[Footnote 15: Such is the deduction which I draw from recent theories
of
harmony. See in this connection _Neue musikatische Theorien und
Phantasien_
(Stuttgart, 1906), § 40. Also Louis and Thuille,
_Harmonielehre_ (1908),
especially Pt. I., ch. 6. The idea can be
traced back to Hauptmann.]
Helmholtz has observed that there is much more in a musical sound
than
its mere _timbre_, and Wagner has noticed how every
musical
instrument has not only its vowel sound, or _timbre_, but also
its
peculiar consonant. We need not go so far as to connect the flute
with an
"f," the trumpet with a "t," etc., since the instrumental
consonants need not
conform exactly with those of the alphabet; it is
enough that each instrument
has its own characteristic way of
attacking the tone. So we gain the idea of
articulation; the point of
its entry into the musical expression marks the
beginning of
_language_.
Hitherto the expression has been, as we have seen, purely lyric;
the
lower animals have no other. But as man rises out of his
bestial
condition and acquires reason his wants become more numerous
and
diverse. The mere expression of his inner feelings no longer
suffices;
he differentiates objects in the external world, and
needs
sounds--names--to express them. For this he utilizes the
newly
developed faculty of language. It is the most momentous crisis of
his
development, the point where he becomes a human being, severed by
a
wide gap from other animals, and incomparably above them. The mark
of
language has from the first rightly been made the _crux_ of the
theory
of the evolution of man; it is the natural inevitable outcome
of his
developing the faculty of reason. Thus the need for
communicating the
perceptions of external objects calls forth
_epic_ expression.[16]
[Footnote 16: "Auf das was vor mir steht zeige ich; was in mir
vorgeht
drücke ich durch Töne und Gebehrden aus; was aber abwesend oder
einst
geschah bedarf, wenn es vernehmlich werden soll einer
zusammenhangend
geordneten Rede. So ward das Epos."--Herder,
_Kalligone_.]
We may now lay down a scheme of the three fundamental vehicles of
human
expression based on their historical development. We have
_Emotional or subjective:_
Gesture--obvious and
material.
Music--warmer, deeper, and more spiritual.
_Rational or
objective:_
Language.
But a warning must be added against pressing this classification
unduly.
All schemes of nature are only approximate; there are no such
sharply divided
compartments into which our notions may be
pigeon-holed. Language may of
course be intensely emotional, but we
may notice that just in proportion as
it becomes emotional it calls in
the aid of music; the voice becomes
melodious, it develops rhythm,
accent, cadence, and ultimately becomes
poetry, which is language
united with a large element of music.
Students of economic science have of recent years given attention
to
ethnology, and their researches into the origin and
primitive
characteristics of labour have brought to light some facts which
are
very interesting to us. The familiar distinction between _work_
and
_play_ has no root in nature. Animals do not look upon their
labours as a
painful task, only to be endured for a time and then to
be rewarded by an
interval of diversion; to the horse or the dog the
day's work is the day's
treat; and so with those men whom we
contemptuously call "savages." It is the
same with artists; no artist
has mastered the technique of his work until it
has become a pleasure
and a plaything to him. There could not be a more
significant comment
on the unnaturalness of a civilization in which periods
of leisure for
the workman have to be wrung from the community by
legislation. The
true workman, like the true artist, is never happy unless he
is at
work; he needs no diversion.
Of the greatest interest to us are the results of the inquiries
of
economists into the relations between work, rhythm, and song
amongst
primitive people. Especially valuable is a treatise by Dr.
Karl
Bucher, professor of national economy in Leipzig, entitled
_Arbeit
und Rhythmus_, which ought to find many readers in England if
it
were translated. I know few modern books that are more fascinating,
and
it would be hard to say whether its charm lies more in its solid
scientific
method or in its admirable literary presentation and apt
illustrations from
the delicate verse-song of the most primitive
peoples.
"_Im Anfang war der Rhythmus_." According to Dr. Bücher, all
work, when
efficient, tends to be rhythmic and each kind of work has
its peculiar
rhythm. This is especially the case when the labour is
carried out in common
by a number of people, and the rhythm is
embodied in a song, or rhythmic word
of command sung by the leader.
Innumerable instances will at once occur to
everybody--rowing,
hauling, marching, sewing, mowing, etc. In primitive
people the
impulse to sing the rhythm is even more marked than it is
among
ourselves, with whom the pressure of civilization helps to
suppress
all natural expression of feeling, and the disturbance of so
many
cross rhythms tends to obliterate the primary pulsations. The
rhythm
is an essential part of the work, and not a mere ornamental
adjunct;
people sing, not to "keep their spirits up," but to help on the
work;
until the workman has acquired the rhythm he works imperfectly,
and
tires very quickly. Those forms of work which do not admit
rhythm,
such as adding figures, copying MSS., etc., are the most
fatiguing.
Still more so is labour where the natural rhythm is subject
to
frequent interruptions. Hence walking in the streets of a town is
much
more wearying than walking in the country; you have to break
the
rhythm at every few steps and never get the "swing." The
constant
interruptions of rhythm by goods in shop-windows,
advertisements,
etc., is, I am sure, largely the cause of nervous degeneracy
in towns.
It cannot surprise us to find that amongst primitive people dancing
is
the most universal occupation. All dance, dance to frenzy.
Originally
the dance does not express joy or any other emotion; it is simply
the
human impulse to activity, work, the most fundamental thing in
human
nature. From the dance rhythm finds its way into music and
poetry,
both being in the beginning intended to accompany dancing. One
thing
is certain, that neither music nor the dance originated in
sexuality.
Eroticism scarcely ever occurs in the poetry of primitive peoples.
It
enters at a later stage.
It is not necessary to trace how, out of these primitive
beginnings,
there grew the ancient drama of the more civilized countries,
always
retaining the three elements from which it had sprung in
closest
union. Speaking of the Indian drama in the time of the
semi-mythical
Bharata, the Indian Thespis, Sir Monier Williams writes:
The drama of these early times was probably
nothing more than the
Indian Nautch of the present
day. It was a species of rude pantomime, in
which
dancing and movements of the body were accompanied
by mute
gestures of the hands and face, or by singing
and music. _Subsequently
dialogue was added_....
In Greece the early lyric epoch is represented by the
Paians,
Dithyrambs, etc., at the festivals of Apollo and Dionysos,
rhythmic
dances to accompaniment of cithara or flute, with words
generally
improvised. Out of the Bacchic dithyrambs grew the tragedy. In
the
works of the great Attic tragedians the chorus, or dance-song,
which
had descended from earlier times still remained the principal
feature
of the representation. It was the drama that crystallized out of
the
music and dance, not the music that was called in to support or
adorn
the drama. Not until the time of Euripides did the chorus become
a
secondary element of the representation, and from this time on the
drama
begins to decline, becoming more and more a literary product.
It would be a worthy undertaking for a competent student to set
himself
the task of bringing order into the chaos of Wagner's
theoretical writings.
They are crowded with thoughts of the deepest
import, which seem to point the
way to further inquiry, but which
remain suggestions only. The most tiresome
quality in Wagner's
literary style is that he scarcely ever comes to the
point. Whenever
he asserts a rule in clear and unmistakable language, it is
either
brought in almost parenthetically amidst a mass of rhetoric,
or--as,
for example, in the dictum of music being a means to the
dramatic
end--he treats it with scorn, as something too obvious to be
stated.
In either case its chances of gaining the reader's attention
are
seriously diminished by such wrong method. A student who
should
undertake the task of ordering his thought would need to possess,
in
addition to the highest musical and dramatic qualifications
a
metaphysical habit of mind such as is rare at the present day, and
a
sympathetic capacity for discerning the grains of golden truth
amidst
the dross. He must construct anew. Wagner's theoretical edifice
will
not stand as it is; it is too loosely jointed; but the materials
are
valuable. That there will ever be a real science of aesthetics I
do
not believe; art would cease to be art if it lost its mystery. For
the
present at least we must be content to remain in darkness as to
the
precise conditions of musical expression, and eschew theory.
That
music does reveal the nature of things in a way different from
words
can scarcely be questioned. So, too, does all nature through
its
silent music reveal more than meets the senses. But we cannot
say
exactly how or why. Enough that the divine reason whereby the world
is
fashioned is not the same as our human reason, and will not be
forced
into its forms.
Although I have no intention of defending the extravagances of
the
Wittelsbach kings and may say at once that my sympathies are
entirely
with the patriotic citizens of Munich who in 1865 succeeded in
turning
Wagner out of a position which he ought never to have held, it is
only
fair to point out that even from the standpoint of material gain
the
lavish expenditure of those art-loving princes has proved a
splendid
investment, of which the results may now be seen. What is it that
has
enabled Munich to double its population in about twenty years and
has
raised it from being a rather sleepy old-fashioned German town to
its
present flourishing condition and made it the most delightful
capital
in Europe, a meeting-place for the cultured of every country of
Europe
and America? What else but the art-collections and
musical
performances? Had Wagner then succeeded in founding his art-school
and
theatre, with Semper, the builder of Dresden, as his architect,
and
his own supreme mind directing the whole, who can say what the
result
might have been?
I ought to say here that I find nothing more admirable in Plato than
his
criticism of poetry, and I cannot understand the difficulties
which scholars
find in his treatment of artists in the _Republic_
and elsewhere. After all,
scholars have as a rule little experience of
any art that lies outside the
narrow range of their own studies.
Plato's remarks appear to me the
perfection of common sense. Would any
sane statesman, when devising such a
revolutionary political scheme as
is contemplated in the _Republic_, not take
the opportunity of
putting a bridle upon the mischievous vapourings of
political poets,
reformers, dreamers, schemers, _et hoc genus omne_? It
should
never be forgotten that the poet with the attractive fascination
which
he possesses in his art is an enormous power in society, all the
more
dangerous because his power is so subtle, and his doctrines not
in
themselves untrue. Can it be doubted that our own Byrons and
Shelleys,
with their frothy extravagances about freedom, have
largely
contributed both to the socialism and to the libertinism with
which
the politics of every nation in Europe are now infected? Even
the
great Schiller was led astray by the false watchwords of his time,
and
highly as I revere Goethe I cannot deny that the sensuality of
his
poetry has had a most baneful influence upon modern Germany. Many
more
might be named, and the subject is well worthy of fuller
treatment.
With regard to Schiller, however, it ought to be explained
that
"freedom" at that time in Germany meant only one thing, freedom
from
the foreign tyrant--Napoleon.
Remember that it is not all poets whom Plato wishes to banish, not
those
who feel the responsibility of their high calling, but only a
certain class.
Nowadays poets do not slander the gods; it is not worth
their while, because
nobody believes in the gods. They have other ways
of undermining society.
Plato everywhere shows an unerring feeling for
art. Aristotle is a recorder
and classifier, but no critic.
CHAPTER IV
THE ROOTS OF GERMAN MUSIC
Dr. Milman, in his great _History of Christianity_, observes that
no
religious revolution has ever been successful which has commenced
with the
Government. Such revolutions have ever begun in the middle or
lower orders of
society. The same is true of other branches of the
intellectual life of man.
Neither Governments nor academies and
schools can ever originate anything new
in art, politics, language.
All growth springs from the unsophisticated
masses; growth is organic,
from below. The blossom must fade, and the seed
fall to the earth
before it can bring forth new life. Academical training
concerns
itself with the models of the past; its useful work consists
in
criticizing, purifying, directing the raw material into
something
higher, better, more useful than it was in the rough, as the
gardener
produces new and better varieties; but it can no more originate
than
the gardener can create new plants; and in perfecting it
often
emasculates.
The reason why the Elizabethan drama is so infinitely more
impressive
than the technically more perfect drama of the Restoration is that
it
is steeped in nature and reality, whereas the later stage
represents
men and women under the fashionable conventions of polite
society.
"The people" indeed includes high as well as low, but none but
the
very strongest natures--a Shakespeare, a Beethoven, a
Goethe--can
endure the stress of Court favour. Where the national nourishment
from
below is deficient, an elegant artificial semblance may indeed
be
forced; but it is felt to be wanting in root and to lack
that
spontaneity and universality which are the very life's breath of
all
true art and specially mark the art of the people.
In England culture has severed itself entirely from popular life.
The
very word "popular," unlike the German _volksthümlich_, carries
the
notion of vulgarity. Yet the lower classes among themselves are
never vulgar;
they only become so when they copy the manners of those
above them, and their
poetry is the very reverse of what we understand
by that word. The
_Volkslied_ exhales the very perfume of nature.
It may be uncouth, harsh,
weather-beaten, but the perfume remains, and
it is never offensive like the
modern music-hall song, which is the
_Volkslied_ of a class that tries to ape
its social superiors.
All, or nearly all, our foremost English poets of recent times have
been
products of that system of public school and university education
which is
justly the pride of modern English upper-class life.
Admirable in many ways
as this system is, it is essentially one of
artificial forcing. The routine
is rigidly prescribed by fashion, and
is so devised as entirely to exclude
all intimate fellowship with the
common people. Nature and reality have no
part in English scholastic
life; "good form" and "sound scholarship" count
for more than the
heart of man. That such a system fosters character and
produces
first-rate men of action and rulers is undeniable, but it is fatal
to
poetry, and the poetry which we produce is what might
be
expected--refined, highly polished, but artificial and wanting
in
sincerity. It bears the same relation to true poetry that etiquette
and
polished manners do to truth and nature. To realize the difference
between
the poetry of the school and the poetry of nature compare the
faultless
English and elegant sweetness of the Idylls of the King with
the vigorous and
expressive, but often ungrammatical, prose of
Mallory, or compare Virgil with
Homer, Horace with Sappho, a chorale
by Mendelssohn with a chorale by Bach.
Or compare a modern refrain
dragged in for no other reason than because the
poet has felt that the
form requires a refrain of some kind and has tried to
find one that is
suitable--compare such a refrain by Morris or Rossetti
with
In the spring time,
The only pretty ring time
When birds do
sing,
Hey ding a ding ding.
sung in the very joy of its heart by a childlike and poetic soul.
Both
are poetry: but one is poetry of the drawing-room, the other of
the
fields and forests; one is pretence, the other reality; the latter
is
hardly poetry at all, and cannot be criticized logically; it is
rather
human feeling finding its natural expression in verse of greater
or
less perfection according to the skill of the versifier, but
always
truthful, never posing, using no sophistic formulas, meaning just
what
it says.
These preliminary remarks were necessary because I am sure that it is
to
the narrow notions of classical elegance prevailing in England, and
to the
want of sympathy with nature and the children of nature, that
so many fail to
understand Wagner. German art, at least all that was
produced before the
Franco-German war, is redolent of nature. When
reading a volume of typically
German songs such as _des Knaben
Wunderhorn_ (whether they are technically
genuine _Volkslieder_ or
not, is of no consequence) one feels as if one were
walking through
a German forest. Even in the art which is necessarily
confined within
a room the artist's mind seems to be wandering outside, and
the
portrait-painter will admit through some open window or crevice
a
breeze from field and forest beyond. In the same spirit the
musicians,
and particularly the most German of all, Bach, Haydn,
Schubert,
Beethoven, delight in the rhythms of the popular dance. Of all
modern
composers Wagner was the most _volksthümlich_; the roots of his
art
are in the _Volks-Sage_, the _Volkslied_, and the dance, and the
masses have
always been true to him. He makes it his boast that while
intellectuals were
raging and warning men not to heed his siren-tones,
the public in Germany,
France, Italy, England, wherever the
performance was tolerably adequate, paid
no heed, but invariably met
him with the warmest enthusiasm.
Jakob Grimm, in his essay on the _Meistergesang_, illustrates the
deep
and pensive innocence of the _Volkslied_ by the story of the
infant Krishna,
into whose mouth his mother looked and beheld within
him the measureless
glories of heaven and earth while the child
continued its unconscious,
careless play. "Such," he continues, "is
the completeness (Ganzheit) of
Nature as compared with the halfness
(Halbheit) of human effort."
The condition for the growth of truly popular art is that society
shall
present a coherent whole, the upper and lower classes united in
a bond of
common sympathy with a feeling of brotherhood between them.
English society
was not always so divided as we see it now. We possess
a wealth of popular
song which has come down to us from mediaeval
times, a heritage nobler than
that of any other nation; But can it be
said that our national life is in the
smallest degree inspired by
these songs? They have indeed latterly become a
fashion; we collect
them, arrange them with pianoforte accompaniments, listen
to them at
concerts. It is a mere fashionable craze, like that for "the
simple
life," and differs in no whit from that ridiculed by Wagner in
the
Italian opera, and in Meyerbeer, as an attempt to extract the
perfume
from the wild flower that we may have it conveniently to put upon
our
pocket handkerchiefs and carry about with us, to enjoy the sweets
of
nature and care nothing for the soul. To know the _Volkslied_ we
must
descend from our fine palaces, and know it in the place where it
grows, and
become one with them who brought it forth. We must live
their life, must
learn so see what they see, to love what they love,
if we would understand
their language.
Precisely parallel is the art in which the English genius
specially
delighted, architecture. Noble and simple, learned and lewd,
severed
by the Conquest, were united in the church, and our cathedrals are
in
the truest sense the creations of the people. Like the
_Volkslieder_,
like the great epics and the Icelandic Sagas, these works are
anonymous.
No one knows, and no one seems to have cared, who made them. They
were
built for the glory of God, not for that of man.
In about the twelfth century in Germany the whole community was
one
body, scarcely differentiated into classes as regards
their
Intellectual life. There were masters and servants, noblemen
and
plebeians, as now, but they followed the same ends, received the
same
education, and shared the same amusements. The _Volk_ was the
entire
community, from the prince on the throne to the village child.
Literary
education was confined to the clerical orders. The word
"ballad," which is,
or was, the English equivalent of _Volkslied_,
signifies a dance, and at this
early period the bond between dance and
song was still intact; the song was
danced, and the dance sung to, as
it is to this day in the Shetland and Faroe
islands, and in parts of
Norway and elsewhere. The ballad was a popular
composition, in the sense
just described, but this does not mean that ballads
grew up of
themselves, as wild flowers. Each owed its origin to some poet,
who
composed music and words together. But the people who sang it
cared
little for the personality of the poet; so long as his song was a
good
one it was received and sung, but he was forgotten. Nor did they
show
much respect for his text or tune; they trimmed both as they pleased,
cut
away what they did not like, added and altered, changed names,
turned
sense into nonsense, or less often nonsense into sense, moved by
their
sweet will alone. It can be seen going on now in Germany
among
students and foresters, and in all places where they sing. In a
society
where men are free to follow their own natural bent, their
minds
uncorrupted by books, the public taste is generally not only healthy,
but
often very dainty and critical. They will find at least what they
like
themselves, and have no need to consult any one else. Thus
the
_Volkslied_ was the creation as it was the property of the people
in
just the same sense as were our mediaeval churches. The fact that
the
authors are not recognizable is vital for this kind of art.
The recreations of the people at this time were "_Sagen,
Singen,
Tanzen_," story-telling, singing, dancing, in which all
joined,
high and low together; no others were known. At the close of
the
twelfth century, a great change began to take place in German
song,
partly through the influence of foreign troubadours, but far
more
owing to changes in social conditions. The reviving interest
in
letters is indicated by the founding of universities in Italy
and
France, by the publication of cyclopedias and other
educational
treatises. There arises a cultured class outside the Church. When
the
nobleman received a scholastic education, and consequently could
form
a literary circle of his own, he began to look down upon the
ignorant
rustic and popular poetry was affected accordingly. The
Courts
attracted a special class of professional singers, the
_Minnesingers_,
and it was natural that the more talented among the people
should be no
longer content to blossom unknown, but should seek engagement at
the
Courts where they were honoured and paid. Thus the _Volk_ was
drained
of its talent; the poet becomes famous, art loses its native
innocence and
becomes more like what we see it now, where the name
of the poet is of more
consideration than the pleasure to be derived from
the poem.
The Court poets of the thirteenth century do not here concern us
for
their own sake. Their song was short-lived and eventually
withered
under the degenerate _Meistersingers_. But their work was
not
lost.
With the decline of chivalry and the disappearance of Court life as
a
thing apart the _Volkslied_ began once more to flower. From
the
fourteenth century to the sixteenth song was universal, and it is
from
this time that the ballads of our collections are mostly gathered.
But
now its character has changed; the short period of
fashionable
prosperity has not failed to leave its mark. Words, music, and
dance
are no longer bound together in such close alliance. The first to
part
company from the rest to begin an independent existence is always
the
text, which becomes literary poetry for silent perusal or
recitation.
Song is then no longer poetry set to music, but rather
music
accompanied by verse. Instead of the two being co-ordinate, music
is
now first, and the words are only its vehicle. The change was
very
gradual, but the _Volkslied_ in its latest and most
complete
development is practically an instrumental composition,
retaining,
however, its bond with the past on the one hand through the words,
on
the other through the _canto fermo_ in the tenor, the familiar
ancient
tune round which the counterpoint was woven in a kind of
canonical imitation,
first (fifteenth century) in three parts then
(sixteenth) in four, but always
with the _canto fermo_ in
rhythmic contrast to the rest of the composition.
It has been pointed
out by Liliencron[17] that what appears at first sight to
be rhythmic
chaos in the polyphonic _Volkslied_ is really a highly
artistic
and effective device for bringing the _canto fermo_--the
ancient
tune--into prominence; whilst the other voices are generally
in
_tempus imperfectum_ or square time, the tenor is in some
other
contrasting rhythm. The standard of musical education must have
been
exceedingly high at this period in Germany, since we hear of
these
difficult compositions being sung, not only at concerts and
festivals,
but in private circles as a common recreation. Indeed, as Sir H.
Parry
has observed,[18] the practice of combining several tunes is by
no
means so uncommon among people destitute of all musical training
as
might be expected. At the present day in Germany, a girl of the
lower
classes may often be heard singing at her work while her
companion
adds an extempore part with considerable skill.
[Footnote 17: _Deutsches Leben im Volkslied_. Introd., p. xxix.]
[Footnote 18: _Art of Music_, pp. 99 seq. For an account of the
musical
culture in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
see the
Introduction to Dr. Naylor's _Shakespeare and Music_, a
most interesting and
useful little work.]
The divorce between music and words became complete when songs
were
arranged in transcriptions for various instruments. For now
the
orchestra and the _Kapellmeister_ have come into being and the
further
development of music is instrumental. With the invention of
printing and the
influence of the Italian Renaissance with its
humanistic and pseudo-classical
ideals the dissolution is completed.
Poems are no longer sung but only read,
while instrumental music
follows its own paths alone.
In the Middle Ages instrumental music can scarcely be said to
have
existed as an art. Musical instruments--"giterne and
ribible"--were
known and played upon. "Fiddlers, players, cobblers, and
other
debauched persons" tramped the country and appeared at festivals
in
company with jugglers and mountebanks. Towards the beginning of
the
sixteenth century, private orchestras were maintained by the noble
and
the wealthy. Still the instrumental band held at best but a
secondary
place beside the vocal choir. "Harping," says the ancient bard,
"ken I
none, for song is chefe of myn-strelsé." The music which it
played
differed in no essential respect from that intended for
singing;
indeed the part-song was often arranged without alteration
for
instruments, and so instrumental technique grew out of vocal
technique,
but--and this is important--retaining important rhythmic
characteristics
from the dance. Exactly as all stone architecture--Gothic,
Classic,
Saracenic--bears the features of its wooden parent, so does our
modern
instrumental music reproduce the physiognomy of its origin, uniting
the
flowing cantilene of the voice with the marked rhythm of the dance,
and
we may notice in any modern instrumental composition how the two
are
contrasted together, now the one feature predominating, now the
other.
There remains yet another current in the stream of musical
development
of at least equal importance with the growth of dance and song.
I
cannot here enter fully into the history of ecclesiastical music. We
are
only concerned with the influence exerted by Dutch and Italian
composers of
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries upon the
development of later German
music.
While pope and prelate cared only for the outer logical shell
of
Christian doctrine, which they could use as a weapon in their
struggle
for power, art laid hold upon its vital essence. Those politicians
who
are in the habit of sneering at Wagner's steadfast belief in
the
saving power of art for human society would do well to cast a
glance
at the course of each development of the Christian ideal,
the
political and the artistic respectively. In the Middle Ages the
one
showed itself in councils like those of Nicea and Ephesus,
in
political popes like Gregory VII. and Innocent III., in
Isidorian
decretals, excommunications, interdicts, tortures, indulgences;
the
other in our mediaeval cathedrals, in the poetry of a Dante,
the
paintings of a Giotto and a Raphael, the sculpture of a
Michael
Angelo, the music of a Palestrina, and our politician might then
ask
himself which he thought had been the more beneficial as a
social
force. There still remain as our meagre heritage from these times
of
"faith," on the one hand the orthodoxy of the Nicene Creed, on
the
other certain festivals and celebrations in the cathedral of a
small
Bavarian town, little known, scarcely noticed, but still in the
full
glory of their pristine mediaeval beauty.
No one who has not attended the celebrations in the cathedral
of
Regensburg can fully measure what has been lost for mankind through
the
domination of human rationalism in the place of religious
devotion. Here
alone in Europe all who will may yet hear the great
masters of the sixteenth
century rightly performed with the ancient
ritual, and Gregorian chant that
belongs to it, without pretence,
without pomp or pageant, with the single
purpose of serving God
worthily in that true spirit of mediaeval sincerity
and purity which
our historians are apt to pass over unnoticed in their
rancorous
eagerness to proclaim the sins of the Church. The compositions
of
Palestrina and his compeers represent music in its highest form as
pure
song in its most perfect consummation, attaining as song an
elevation which
has never even been distantly approached since. "The
centuries have no power
over the Palestrina style," says its
historian; "it can neither fade nor
die." Truly does Wagner say we
shall never believe the vocal school which
followed it to have been
the legitimate daughter of that wondrous
mother.
The predominant feature of this music is harmony, brought forth by
the
union, not of sounds, but of melodies--different and
contrasting
melodies united in harmony, that is the characteristic of
the
polyphonic school, and the rhythm is marked, not by accents, but
by
changes of the chords. It is a rhythm of quantity alone, not of
accent
and quantity combined, as in the song and the dance and in
modern
music. Thus, although dancing was by no means excluded from the
church
in early times--its trace still remains in the name choir
[Greek:
choros] for that part of the church where the dancing
was
performed[19]--its most characteristic element, accent, came to
be
banished from the music of the church as something foreign to
the
character of religious worship. But the loss was amply repaid by
the
wealth and richness which the harmonic structure was able to
acquire,
and which was rendered intelligible by that fine and expressive
method
of handling the separate voices which we know as counterpoint. This
is
not without some interest for us, because, widely as Wagner's
harmonies
differ from those of Palestrina, we shall find that they too
can often only
be understood through the progression of the voices.
The same is true of
Bach's harmonies. Harmony was generated by
polyphony, and not _vice versa_;
that is, men first tried fitting
melodies together, not chords, and when they
had learned to do this
skilfully, so that they sounded well together, harmony
came into
being. It does not follow that the music was unrhythmic because it
was
unaccented, and because in writing it was not divided into bars.
No
music can be intelligible without rhythm. The rhythmic pulsations
are
there; they are distinctly felt by the hearer in the performance,
and
in modern editions the barring is always introduced; but it is
less
crude, less obvious, through not being enforced by strong accents.
[Footnote 19: Ménil, _Histoire de la Danse_, where an
interesting
account of church dancing in the Middle Ages will be
found.]
We have already seen how the _Volkslied_ became fertilized by
the
polyphony of church-music. At the same time the music of the
mass
itself received an important impulse from the _Volkslied_.
The
employment of well-known popular song-melodies as _canti fermi_
in
sacred contrapuntal compositions had a very beneficial effect upon
those
works, inasmuch as it introduced a bit of fresh popular life
into music just
at the moment when it was in danger of degenerating
into pedantry and
triviality.[20] Possibly the secularization of
church music went too far, and
at the Council of Trent the proposal
was very seriously considered whether
the music of the church should
not be restricted to the traditional Gregorian
chant, which had never
been popular and never will be, because priests cannot
ordinarily be
found to sing it properly. The point at issue in this
celebrated
discussion really was whether in polyphonic song the words could
be
made intelligible,[21] for if not the music would become a
mere
decorative feature, and the mass itself unmeaning. Precisely as in
the
Wagner controversy of three centuries later, the question was
whether
art was a diversion only to be enjoyed for the sake of the
pleasure
which it afforded, or whether it had a serious didactic
purpose
founded on a reality. It is impossible not to be struck with
the
similarity of the issues involved with those of the Wagner
struggle.
In both the question was raised whether music could be justified
in
detaching itself from its basis--in the one case religious, in
the
other dramatic--and assert an absolute existence for itself.
Still
closer is the resemblance when we consider the dramatic character
of
the Roman ritual, with its sublime conceptions of Real Presence
and
Transubstantiation. The ritual during Holy Week, for example, is
the
story of the Passion, partly narrated, partly in a sort of
idealized
representation. When the solemn moment of the Crucifixion is
reached
on Good Friday, when the officiating priests advance in turn
to
adoration while the Cross itself lifts its voice in "Reproaches" to
the
multitude with Palestrina's music, who does not feel the dramatic
directness
of the representation?
Popule meus, quid feci tibi? aut in quo contristavi
te? responde
mihi.
_Chor_. [Greek: agios ho theos, agios hischuros, agios
'athanatos.]
Quia eduxi te de terra Aegypti: parasti crucem
Salvatori tuo.
_Chor_. Sanctus deus, sanctus fortis, sanctus et immortalis.
Miserere nobis.
--The chorus answering each "Reproach" alternately in the Greek of
the
Eastern Church and the Latin of the Western Church. Such music as
this
has quite a different character from that of our concert-rooms; it
is
music which means something.
[Footnote 20: Ambros., Gesch., ii. p. 286.]
[Footnote 21: Ambros., Gesch., iv, pp. 14 seq.]
The problem was definitely settled for the church by the music
of
Palestrina. But he did not change the course of history, and with
his
death in the same year (1594) as that of his great
contemporary
Orlando Lasso, his work came to an end. His influence had indeed
been
profound, and he left as his disciples and successors men of
gifts
scarcely inferior to his own; but the fashion had changed;
Italian
humanism and the sway of the Press destroyed worship,
destroyed
spontaneity, and by the year 1600 the pure vocal style and
the
_Volkslied_ had both passed away.
Our results so far can be very shortly summed up. Modern music has
three
main elements, which were fed from three sources:
Rhythm -- Cantilene -- Polyphony.
| | |
The dance
_Volkslied_ Church music.
It has been my endeavour in the preceding to show how these
three
intermingled with and reacted upon one another. The outcome of
all
three has been modern German orchestral music; for the
distinctive
music of modern Germany up to Beethoven is orchestral. In saying
this,
I have not forgotten the great German song-composers, but even
their
work is insignificant beside that of the instrumentalists, and
has
been so affected both in design and in technique by instrumental
music
as in a great degree to lose its vocal character. The choruses
of
Handel and Bach are almost entirely instrumental in character.
The change which came over artistic expression from about 1600
on
implied a deeper and more vital change in the conception of art
itself.
Till then men had believed the things they told in their art.
Byzantine
saints, Cynewulf's Scriptural legends, German
_Heldenerzählungen_, Icelandic
_Sagas_, down to the saints
and angels of the pre-Raphaelites, all
represented realities to the
poet; he would have felt no interest in telling
of things which he did
not believe to be true. But henceforward we have art
for its own sake;
the truthfulness of the subject-matter is of no account;
the sole
canon of art is beauty of form; its purpose not instruction
but
pleasure.
I know no episode in the history of art that is more instructive
than
the birth of the Italian opera. It was typically a product of
the
Renaissance, but it came at the very end of that movement, when
the
freshness of its early vigour was past, when learning had
declined
into pedantry, and its graceful art was lost in _barocco_.
The period of Italian history known as the Renaissance is
important
because it brought forth a greater number of geniuses of the
highest
rank than ever existed together in any country before or since,
except
perhaps in the great time of Athens. But in itself it was a
falsehood.
It was an attempt to revive former _Italian_
greatness,
forgetting that the greatness of Italy had been exclusively
military
and political, whereas the modern movement was literary and
artistic.
It committed the blunder of confusing together under the
term
"classic" two very different forms of culture, the Greek and
the
Roman, very much as we now group Hindus, Moslems, and
Chinamen
together as "Orientals." All that was really great in art was
Greek,
but they were content to receive it through the tradition of the
most
inartistic nation that ever lived. Far indeed were the
Renaissance
humanists from the noble simplicity of Hellenic art.
The Renaissance movement in Italy was not only, like the
German
Reformation, anticlerical; it was atheist and immoral, at least in
its
later degenerate period, and it is likely that the representatives
of
the latest modernism who met and aired their views in the
Florentine
salons at the end of the sixteenth century, were inspired as much
by
hatred of religion, or by what is called love of freedom, as
by
enthusiasm for art. Hitherto the Renaissance had taken little notice
of
music. It was a barbarian art; how could Florentine exquisites,
disciples of
Machiavelli, men of the vein of Lorenzo di Medici, Leo
X., and Baldassari
Castiglione be expected to occupy themselves with
the art of men bearing such
names as Okeghem or Obrecht? Popes and
Cardinals, however, had shown
themselves much better connoisseurs of
art than the humanists, and had
brought these barbarians to Italy, had
given them high appointments and
become their pupils. The fact that
the antipathy of the humanists to music
was extended to that of their
own great countrymen, to Palestrina, Vittoria,
Suriano, cannot be
entirely accounted for by their dislike of everything
clerical, still
less by want of taste. The cause lay far deeper. It was the
transition
from the old order to the new, from mediaeval faith to
modern
rationalism, from art to science.
Art and science both contemplate Nature, and seek to turn her gifts
to
account to better and ennoble human life. Art accepts the
beautiful
objects of Nature as they are, without questioning. The artist
says:
"Let me lead you by the hand; I have seen something new and
beautiful;
here it is; try to see it too, with my help, that we may both
enjoy it
together." But he uses no compulsion; with those who turn a deaf
ear
to him he is powerless. Science on the other hand tries to
compel
belief by irresistible processes of logic; the scientist's axiom
is
that if the premises be true the conclusion _must_ follow, and he
pours
scorn upon all who refuse assent to his interpretations,
denouncing them as
ignorant, superstitious, if not wilfully blind and
perverse. Mystery,
according to the ancients the beginning of
philosophy, has no place in
science; what cannot be explained is
superstitious and must be rejected as
false. The source of art, as of
religion, must be sought not in the
ineffable, incomprehensible
phenomena of nature, but in the human mind, in
reason, to which all
art must conform.
This was the spirit in which the founders of the _nuove musiche_
sought
to carry out their reforms; their intolerance rivals that of
Lucretius or
Haeckel. It is impossible to suppose that men of their
highly-cultured
aesthetic sense were deaf to the purely musical beauty
of polyphony. They
were trained in its school, and had employed it
themselves most skilfully in
their madrigals. It was the _mystery_ of
the mass and of its attendant music
which they detested.
Another consideration must be added. Hand in hand with
this
rationalizing tendency, indeed only another phase of the
same
phenomenon, is the striving for self-assertion of the
individual,
which is the mark of all progress towards higher civilization.
The
contrapuntal mass or motet expressed the commonwealth of the
Church,
where the individual disappears, absorbed in the community.
The
_nuove musiche_ sought to emancipate the individual, and allow
him to
express his own independent existence. Thus the progress of the
modern
musical drama presents an exact parallel to that of the Greek
drama, from
before Thespis onwards, except that here the change from
lyric to dramatic
representation was slower, because, there being no
preconceived plan or model
for the reformers to work by, the
development was gradual and natural instead
of violent.
The year 1600 marks with considerable accuracy the transition from
the
old order to the new. The two greatest masters of the old school
had
recently died, and with them their work expired. At the wedding
of
Henri IV. of France with Maria de' Medici in Florence, in that
year,
was performed the opera _Euridice_, the joint work of Caccini
and
Peri, which is the starting-point of the new music.
The details of the invention of the _nuove musiche_, the ideas
which
brought it forth, how these were nursed in the salons of
Florentine noblemen,
especially in that of Bardi Conte Vernio, are all
well known. They did not
proceed in the first instance from musicians,
but from scholars, who, having
read in the course of their studies
about Grecian (or Roman--it was all the
same to them) dramatic music,
determined to add to the other accomplishments
of the new order that
of reviving the ancient drama with its music. They were
vehement in
their denunciations of the barbarous institutions of counterpoint
and
loudly called for a return to the only true principles of music
as
taught by the ancients. With this end in view they drew into
their
circle the most gifted musicians whom they could find, and
expounded
to willing and zealous ears the principles of music as embodied in
the
rules of Plato and Aristotle, omitting, however, to state where
they
found them in the works of those philosophers. The first result
was
the opera, or operas (for there seem to have been two, one by
Caccini
and one by Peri, welded into one) _Euridice_ performed at
the
royal wedding. It was followed by other similar works and the
series
has continued in unbroken course for three centuries,
through
Monteverde, Carissimi, A. Scarlatti, down to our own time.
The
physiognomy of the early operas of the classic revival is
still
distinctly traceable in Rossini, Donizetti, and the early Verdi,
after
whom its career was suddenly cut short almost in the height of
its
fame by the publication of the first part of Wagner's _Oper und
Drama_
in 1851.
From the very beginning the Italian opera was what it is now,
frivolous,
insincere, imbecile. Its sole function was, and always has
been, to help
idlers of the upper classes to while away their
evenings. The absurd notion
of a Platonic music was rivalled by the
absurdity of the composition. The
inane dialogue was made up of
interminable recitative, in the midst of which
an occasional
chorus--introduced in conformity with supposed
classical
practice--must have come as a most refreshing relief; for
choruses
they could write. It was dramatic in so far that it was provided
with
all the paraphernalia of the stage and that the singers walked
about
as they sang. Possibly, too, the performers had some initiation
into
modern methods of operatic acting, and would raise one arm at the
word
_cielo_, two arms at certain other words, etc.; but it would be
hard
to detect any living dramatic idea in those mythological heroes
and heroines,
Dafnes, Amors, Tirsis, Ariannas dressed up as stage
shepherds and
shepherdesses. The only _raison d'être_ of the
music in the minds of the
fashionable audience was--then as now--to
provide a stimulus for conversation
and flirting, or a pleasant
diversion in the intervals of their business
transactions.
But it is easy to ridicule the follies and failures of men who
were
striving after an ideal. More profitable to us it will be to
trace
what substantiality their dream of dramatic revival really
possessed,
and if we strip it of the false garment of classicity in which
it
masqueraded, and of its self-asserting intolerance, there is
no
question that, whatever the results of the efforts of these
reformers,
their intention was admirable. They themselves, the composers,
were
deeply in earnest; their objects were not what they supposed, but
they
were entirely worthy, and though we may wonder at their failure
to
appreciate the entrancing beauty of polyphonic music, we must
admit
even here that their objections were not without some force.
To
realize this we must transfer ourselves in imagination to
their
conditions and endeavour to consider the problems from
their
standpoint, remembering how they were impelled by the irresistible
law
of progress, the assertion of individualism, and by the desire
for
dramatic treatment.
The main objection brought by the reformers against polyphony was
that
the elaborate imitative treatment of the voices made the
words
unintelligible. We may remember that exactly the same objection
had
already been raised at the Council of Trent by clericals
themselves.
Vocal music alone, the reformers contended, can be recognized as
true
music, for music is essentially language and rhythm, and only in
the
last place tone.[22] Consequently, _right declamation_ is of
its
essence. On this ground they objected to mixing together high
notes
and low, fast movement and slow, to dividing a syllable between
many
notes, to repetition of words and phrases. Especially significant
is
the advice given by Vincentio Galilei to composers to study
the
expression of gifted actors.[23]
[Footnote 22: Ambros., iv, p.165.]
[Footnote 23: _Ib._., p. 170.]
It is impossible not to treat seriously a movement founded upon
such
arguments as these. They are in the main incontrovertible. We seem
to
be breathing the very atmosphere of Wagner, and it would be
scarcely
too much to say that the humanist movement of the Bardi salon was
in
its _intention_ the forerunner of the German movement dreamed of
by
Herder, Schiller, Jean Paul, and accomplished by Wagner, who at
last
succeeded in finding what the others had sought, namely, the true
relations
between words, music, and acting. Even the idea of
concealing the orchestra
originated with them. Why, then, did it not
succeed? Why did the very name of
Italian opera become a by-word for
all that is frivolous and inartistic in
dramatic art? The answer must
be sought in the dictum of Dean Milman quoted
at the beginning of this
chapter. Art is an organic growth, and cannot be
created by authority.
A drama which has been manufactured by fitting together
words, action,
and music in such manner as appears right to the composer,
or
according to models, real or fanciful, however skilful be
the
execution, is no drama; it lacks the breath of life; it is not
a
living organism, but an artificial counterfeit.
In Wagner's theoretical writings there are few things of more
practical
importance than the principle repeatedly insisted upon that
a work of art is
not a production of a gifted artist which he exhibits
for his audience to
criticize, and either to admire and enjoy or to
reject according to their
capacities, but is a mutual interaction, a
conversation as it were between
the artist and his public, _to which
both contribute_. Nor is art a diversion
to be taken up as a
relaxation after the fatigue of serious work, but a
labour requiring
the best efforts of the hearer's faculties. Every artist
worthy of the
name has something new to say, something which has not been
heard
before, but is characteristically his own, and cannot be
understood
without an effort. Artist and hearer must co-operate together
towards
a common end. Wagner's first purpose throughout his life was
to
educate his public, or, to use his own phrase, prepare a soil in
which
his art could flourish. Whenever an attempt is made to create an
art
by authority, whether it be Court patronage, theoretical
exposition,
or any other form of authority, this important principle is
forgotten.
The would-be teachers of the people scatter the seed
irrespectively of
the soil, and the attempt, however laudable, is
ill-timed.
The subsequent history of the Italian opera has been told by
Wagner
himself in the entertaining pages of the first part of his _Oper
und
Drama_, which should be carefully read by all who wish to gain
a
distinct understanding of his aims. A useful supplement to
Wagner's
treatise will be found in a conversation which took place between
him
and Rossini in 1860, a "scrupulously exact" account of which has
been
published forty-six years after it took place from notes taken at
the
time in a pamphlet by E. Michotte of Brussels.[24]
[Footnote 24: Paris, _Librairie Fischbacher_, 1906.]
It would have been impossible for the opera to continue as it had
begun.
People would not have gone to the theatre to hear dreary
recitatives, and
from the very first we hear of concessions being made
to the singers--i.e. to
the audience. By degrees there forms itself
that peculiar kind of vocal
melody which we recognize to-day as
distinctively Italian. Not, be it noted,
melody proper, which is the
very truest expression of the human soul; not the
melody that was
known to the great Germans, but "naked, ear-tickling,
absolute melodic
melody; melody which is nothing but melody; which glides
into our
ears--we know not why; which we sing again--we know not why;
which
to-day we exchange for that of yesterday, and forget
to-morrow--still
we know not why; which is sad when we are gay, merry when we
are
sorrowful, and which we yet hum--just because we know not why."
Let us not be misled by Wagner's bantering description into
despising
Italian melody and supposing it to be a thing utterly worthless.
True,
it has not the musical elevation of German melody. The
little
Neapolitan urchin who basks all day in the sunshine, sings,
steals,
and is ready to drive a knife into his companion, is not perhaps
as
high a type of humanity as the English public-school boy.
Nevertheless
he has a charm entirely his own, and his large round eyes will
make
you forget his sins. Woe to art and to mankind when our hearts
are
closed to such influences! Italian operatic melody is the
expression
of Southern Italian individuality, and has in its very
irresponsibility a
certain fascination different from that of the far nobler
German music.
Wagner waged warfare, not against the Italian opera, not
against
operatic composers, but against impostors and sophists, and
while
trampling upon the serpent in his own path he was as little likely
to
remain untouched by the good-natured lovableness of the Italian as
he
was to slight the high intelligence, the artistic receptiveness
and
thoroughness of the French. On reading his works it is hard to
escape
the impression of a lurking fondness for Rossini on Wagner's
part,
even while he is making game of the whole school. Above all,
Italian
melody possesses one quality which is the highest of all in
melody--it
is eminently singable. No German, unless perhaps Handel,
ever
understood the human voice as did the Italians. Wagner's own
words
leave no doubt as to what he thought. In one of his earliest
writings he
utters a prayer that German composers may one day write
such melody and learn
such treatment of the voice as are found in
Bellini's _Norma_. But, like
Odysseus, he stopped his ears to the
siren-song (his own expression) while at
the same time learning from
it and assimilating what was good therein.
Wagner's vocal melody was
largely modelled on that of the Italians. Tristan
itself was conceived
for Italian singers, and the part of Isolde was
originally intended
for Mdlle. Tietjens. He even adopted Italian mannerisms,
operatic
turns, trills, suspensions, cadences, and bravura tricks. We
may
follow how these Italicisms appearing in all their banality in
his
earlier works become more and more expressive as his style
develops.
[Music: _Rienzi_, ACT V.
Du stärk-lest mich, du gabt mir ho-he
Kraft]
[Music: _Tristan und Isolde_, ACT III.
Won . . . ne Kla-gend]
Cadences of the common Italian type with 6/4 chord or suspension
swarm
in _Tannhäuser_ and _Lohengrin_. In _Tristan_ they never have
the
stereotyped character which they have in his earlier works.
[Music: _Lohengrin_, ACT II.
Ein Glück dass oh-ne Reu]
The finer characteristics of Italian melody, that easy tunefulness
which
seems to have sprung naturally and without effort out of the
mechanism of the
vocal organs, is above all noticeable in the music of
his noblest creation,
Brünnhilde.
[Music: _Walküre_, ACT III. SCENE I.
O heh re-stes Wun-der]
[Music: herr - - - lich-ste Maid]
[Music: _Siegfried_ ACT III. SCENE III.
Sieg-fried-es Stern ... Sie ist
mir e-wig, ist mir
im-mer Erb' und Eig - en ... Ein ... er ist mir]
The flower-maidens' chorus in _Parsifal_ might be called the
apotheosis
of Italian song. What Wagner means by his scathing ridicule
of the Italian
opera and Italian melody, is not that it is worthless,
but that it has no
meaning. In short it is not the drama.
We recognized the radical fault of the Italian opera to be
its
subordination of the drama to the music. In opposition to this it
has
been asserted that the music aids the drama by carrying on the
action.
Let us examine this by the light of one example, the
well-known
seduction scene of Zerlina in _Don Giovanni_. The form of
music
as such is determined by rhythmic repetitions of themes, varied
or
not. The scene is full of dramatic charm and has great
capabilities.
Don Giovanni begins insinuatingly: "Give me your hand, Zerlina;
come
away with me to my castle." The timid peasant girl at first
hesitates.
"No, no," she replies, "I dare not--yet how I should like
to!--but
what would Masetto say?" All this is in the most winning and
seductive
melody; it is exactly the tone in which a young nobleman and a
rather
coquettish but entirely innocent young girl would express
themselves.
The situation becomes warmer; Don Giovanni is more pressing--he
puts
his arm round her--he is just about to kiss her, when suddenly
the
scene begins over again from the beginning with "Give me your
hand,"
etc., and the whole episode is rendered absurd! Up to this point
we
have been so transported by the interest of the scene and
the
appropriateness of the expression that we almost feel ourselves to
be
taking part in it, but the repetition checks our feelings like
a
douche, by the necessity felt by the composer of preserving the
musical
form. Had the action and the music been carried right through
to the second
part, Zerlina's inexpressibly tender
[Music: An-diam!]
would have been most thrilling, and the way would have been
naturally
prepared for the entry of Elvira just in time to save her.
Absolute or instrumental music requires the strict form which
is
effected by means of balanced repetitions in order to supply
that
intellectual element without which it cannot be understood, and
which
in vocal music is afforded by the words. The drama needs no
such
restrictions and cannot endure them. Human actions are not subject
to
mechanical laws; they are intelligible in themselves, but cannot
be
measured out. Human life is a continuous whole, one action
leads
naturally on to another, without any break, and to attempt to
range
the actions of men and women under schemes of arias, cavatinas,
duets,
choruses, each existing for itself and sharply separated from
all
others, can only render them unintelligible and ridiculous.
CHAPTER V
THE WAGNERIAN DRAMA AND ITS ANTECEDENTS
We have already seen that the drama is distinguished from all
other
forms of art by its essential quality of directly enacting the
things
to be communicated instead of merely describing them. Since only
human
things can fitly be so enacted by human beings, dramatic art
is
generally identical with human art; it is the art of representing
the
actions of men and women--or of deities conceived as idealized
human
beings--in such a way as to reveal the motives by which they
are
impelled, their characters. The adjective "dramatic" may, however,
be
understood in two ways, according as our interest is centred in
the
actions themselves, their contrasts and conflicts, or in the
motives
or _characters_ of the persons engaged. In the former case
the
drama will endeavour to represent decisive and exciting
actions
passing in rapid succession before the eyes. This may be called
the
spectacular drama, and its greatest master is Schiller. When Goethe
is
described as "the least dramatic of all great poets" it is in
this
sense that the word is used. Goethe often hankered after
spectacular
effects, but was never very successful in producing them.
But if we consider the essence of a dramatic conception to lie in
the
conflict of opposing motives, not necessarily discharging
themselves
as action, but subdued, and the more impressive because kept
under
restraint within the soul of the actor, we shall rank Goethe
amongst
the very foremost of dramatic poets. Examples of what I will call
the
moral drama are all Goethe's maturer plays, such as _Tasso_
and
_Iphigenie_. To this class also belong Lessing's _Nathan der
Weise_
and the representative French plays of the classic epoch.
They are, generally
speaking, bad stage plays, but are extremely
interesting to read, and gain in
interest the more they are studied.
In the works of the greatest of all
dramatists, such as Sophokles and
Shakespeare, the spectacular and moral
elements are so closely united
as to be inseparable. In the Attic drama the
more striking spectacular
events had, for technical reasons, to be kept out
of sight. Ajax
piercing himself with his sword, Oedipus tearing out his own
eyes,
are, like the thunderstorm in _Lear_, the outcome of
terrific
internal motives bursting all confines with the force of
an
irresistible torrent. Our interest is centred, not in the
actions
themselves, but in the motives which produced them, in the
characters.
Wagner, with his conscientious habit of accounting to himself
for
everything that he did, found his artistic level more slowly than
do
most poets. When the stylistic crudities of his earlier productions
had
been overcome, he began the work of his maturer life with
_Rheingold_, the
most spectacular drama ever written. _Walküre_
and _Siegfried_ were continued
in the same vein, and it is very
significant that he broke off the
composition and laid the work aside
just at the monstrous dragon-fight. It is
no strained conjecture that as
the difficulties of his gigantic subject
accumulated he at last realized
the practical impossibility of what he had
undertaken. To bring the
whole story of the fall of the ancient Germanic gods
into a spectacular
drama on the scale of the _Ring_ was beyond even his
mighty powers,
and in _Die Walküre_ he is like a man trying to break away
from the
path which he has laid down for himself, to get rid of the
cumbersome
spectacular element and let the action develop itself naturally
from
within. With all its unrivalled beauties the _Ring_ as a _drama_ is
a
monstrosity. It turns upon motives which are not apparent from
the
actions and have to be explained in dreary and most undramatic
length.
Its very foundation is wrong; its central figure, the prime author of
the
new and more blessed world which is to follow, is the offspring of
an
incestuous union for which there is no occasion whatever. The
myth
itself has sometimes been held responsible, and it has been
asserted
that Wagner had to reproduce the tradition as he received it.
Nothing
of the kind is true; Wagner has altered the entire story,
taking,
leaving, or altering just as he pleased. In the _Völsunga_ paraphrase
of
Eddic lays, upon which the story of the _Ring_ is founded, the child
of
the unnatural union is not Sigurd, not the golden hero "whom every
child
loved," but the savage outlaw Sinfjötli, half wolf, half robber, one
of
the most terrible creations of mythology. To conceive such a union
as
bringing forth a hero whom we are expected to regard as the very
type of
human nobility and guilelessness is an artistic blunder which
we can only
explain by supposing that Wagner found his material
unmanageable. He was
struggling with impossibilities and gave up
the attempt.
From this he turned to _Tristan_, rushing at once to the
opposite
extreme. The absence of clear and decisive action in _Tristan_
is
as remarkable as the excess of action in the _Ring_. Persuaded
that the
motives and characters of men must be known before their
actions can be
understood, and that these can only be revealed in
music, he has given us in
_Tristan_ music such as no mortal ear
ever heard before or since; but action
there is little or none. He
scarcely deigns to tell even the most vital
incidents of the story.
Can any one say that he has understood the events
connected with
Morold and Tristan's first visit to Ireland and the splinter
of the
sword from the play itself without an independent explanation? Or
that
Tristan's reasons for carrying off Isolde are clear to him
from
Marke's account? Without these incidents the whole story
is
unintelligible, but with Wagner in his then mood they counted
for
nothing in the flood of emotional material. It was in
_Die
Meistersinger_ that Wagner found the final equation between
impulse
and action, and the public has again judged rightly in placing
that
work first among all his dramatic compositions. But the musician
and
the philosopher will always turn to _Tristan_.
There are four principal epochs in which the drama has been
a
flourishing reality in Europe. They are: 1. In Athens in the
fifth
century B.C. 2. In Elizabethan England. 3. In Spain in the
seventeenth
century. 4. In France under Louis XIV.
Of the influence of the Elizabethan drama upon the Wagnerian drama it
is
difficult to speak to any good purpose. Shakespeare is the common
heritage of
all German dramatists, Wagner as well as others, and it is
not too much to
say that the enthusiasm for Shakespeare which began
towards the end of the
eighteenth century was the stimulus which
roused the German nation to create
a drama of its own. It is enough
for the present if we note that the
Elizabethan drama is
characteristically human and popular. True, the
Elizabethans revel in
courts and high society, as do the populace; they
represent kings and
rulers as they are beheld from outside, and there is
always a
"Sampson" or "Gregory," or "Citizen" or "Merchant" ready as a
chorus
to express with great shrewdness his opinion of the doings of
his
betters.
For an opposite reason we may pass over very shortly the
French
classical drama, namely, because it does not seem to have weighed
with
Wagner at all. Corneille, Racine, and their contemporaries are
little
mentioned in his writings; certainly he shows no enthusiasm for
their
art. Yet the influence of the French stage was by no means
a
negligible quantity in the development of the German drama.
It was Lessing who in the trenchant prose of his _Hamburger
Dramaturgie_
first revolted against the French domination, the
strength of which may be
judged from the list there given of works
performed in the Hamburg theatre
from April to July 1767. Of the
fifty-two plays there enumerated, fifteen
were German, thirty-five
French, and two from other languages--only one being
English. In
itself the French influence was not altogether for evil; what was
bad
was the unlimited sway of a foreign art. The French sense for
elegance
of form is far more acute than that of either Germans or
Englishmen,
but with the Louis Quatorze dramatists it had degenerated
into
pedantry. The "Unities," rightly understood, are a very
important
feature of every drama. Aristotle has treated this much vexed
question
with his customary Hellenic moderation. Inner unity is
an
indispensable qualification of every work of art; dramatic unity
is
technically called Unity of Action, that is, the mind must be able
to
receive the work as a whole, and it must have a beginning, a
middle,
and an end. Only nature is at once varied and eternal. Out of
this
_may_ proceed the Unities of Time and Place, but so far from
being
obligatory they were not even always observed in the Greek
tragic drama
itself, where they seem specially called for by the
presence of the chorus
and where the fact that a dramatic performance
was always a competition made
some restrictions binding upon all
competitors necessary. Aristotle's only
rule about time is that the
length must be such that it can be easily
comprehended (_Poet._,
vii. 1450_b_), and he adds in a general way that in
his day
tragedy generally tried as far as possible to keep within
one
revolution of the sun, or thereabouts (_Ib._, v. 1449_b_).
Of the
third Unity, that of Place, he says nothing at all.
Aristotle's eminently practical generalizations of the features of
the
drama as it existed in Athens in his day were exalted by the
French
dramatists of the seventeenth century into rigid inviolable laws,
and
a dramatist would in a doubtful case think it necessary to
demonstrate
to his public in a special discourse that he had not been guilty
of
any breach of the law in this respect! The authority of the
supreme
law-giver was incontestable; the only question was how to
interpret
his enactments. Does, for example, "one revolution of the sun"
mean
twelve hours or twenty-four? This and other such weighty matters
were
subjects of warm controversy. Lessing's mind was critical rather
than
creative; he, too, was an enthusiastic student of Aristotle, and
read
with far truer artistic intelligence than Corneille. The criticism
of
his _Hamburgische Dramaturgie_ cleared the way for the great
creative
poets of the end of the eighteenth and first half of the
nineteenth century.
It was a period of experiment, both in
subject-matter and in form. The latter
hovers between that of classic
tradition and the licence of Shakespeare,
while the subjects are
generally taken from foreign history or from Greek
mythology; only
occasionally, as in _Götz von Berlichingen_ and
_Wallenstein_, from
German history. The entire dramatic movement of this
period is an
endeavour to find a workable compromise between the classic
and
the Elizabethan drama, an endeavour which attained a fair measure
of
success a little later in the superb classic tragedies of Grillparzer.
Still,
noble as were its achievements in this direction, the German
nation had
higher aims. As it gained in self-consciousness and
conceived its own
artistic ideals it could not but feel itself worthy to
bring forth an art
characteristically its own. Till now the only
indigenous German art had been
instrumental music, and the stupendous
achievements of a Bach, a Haydn, a
Beethoven must have helped to
bring home to the Germans the artistic
capabilities latent within them.
The decisive step in German art was taken by Richard Wagner,
whose
appearance is like a world-catastrophe. In one vast flood,
comparable
only to the tide of his overwhelming music, all that was trivial
and
experimental was swept away. What was strong enough to swim in
the
tide was invigorated and strengthened; Goethe, Schiller,
Kleist,
Grillparzer, Weber, Mozart, Beethoven, and their compeers are
both
better performed and better understood now than they were
before
Wagner's appearance, but all the second-rate has perished. The days
of
experimenting have passed; the danger now threatening German art is
not
from abroad, but is within itself, from those of its own body who,
just when
the only hope lies in sobriety and self-restraint, are
goading it on the
career of intoxication.
There remain the Hellenic and the Spanish dramas. Wagner's
true
spiritual progenitors were Sophokles and Calderon. Different as
are
the creations of two such widely separated epochs in their
external
physiognomy, they possess one vital characteristic in common. In
both
man is the instrument of higher powers; whether they be, as in the
one
case, Zeus or Ate, or, as in the other, Honour or Christian
faith,
matters little. These are the real actors, impersonated in flesh
and
blood in the heroes.
An Englishman who, like myself, is ignorant of the Spanish language
and
people can never hope to understand, still less to expound, their
literature.
The Spanish drama is largely dependent upon subtleties of
metre and diction
which cannot be reproduced in translations, and it
is inspired by motives
very different from our own. Our watchwords are
"self-interest," "freedom,"
"progress"; those natural to the Spaniard
are "honour" and "Catholic
Christianity." No great people has been so
uniformly true to the traditions
of its nationality as the Spanish.
Alone among the nations Spain has refused
to assimilate the
rationalist formulas fashionable in other countries; she
has preferred
to relinquish her foremost place in the European commonwealth
rather
than her ideals. To us the policy of Philip II appears as perverse
as
the notions of honour and Christianity appear extravagant in
Spanish
dramas; the reason is that we are not Spaniards, and we read
their
history through the spectacles of rationalist historians. But if
we
once concede their fundamental notions as they understand them, we
must
acknowledge that Spanish history and Spanish art proceed directly
out of them
more logically, more naturally, than in those nations
which are continually
being drawn aside, now this way, now the other,
by the political notions and
passing philosophies of the day.
Wagner made his first acquaintance with the Spanish drama in the
winter
of 1857-58, when engaged on the composition of _Tristan_,
and at once seized
its character with the sympathetic insight of
genius. His remarks in a letter
to Liszt written at this time[25] are
so noteworthy, and bear so directly
upon the work with which we are
concerned, that I will add a translation of a
portion of the letter:
I am almost inclined to place Calderon by himself
and above all
others. Through him, too, I have learned
to understand the Spanish
character. Unprecedented,
unrivalled in its blossom, it developed so
rapidly that
its material body soon perished, and it ended in
negation
of the world. The refined, deeply passionate
consciousness of the nation
finds expression in the
notion of _honour_, wherein its noblest and at the
same
time its most terrible elements unite to a second
religion.
Extremes of selfish desire and of sacrifice
both seek to be satisfied. The
nature of the "world"
could not possibly find sharper, more dazzling,
more
dominating, and at the same time more destructive,
more terrible
expression. The poet in his most
vigorous presentations has taken for his
subject the
conflict of this _honour_ with the deep human feeling of
_sympathy_ (_Mitgefühl_). The actions are dictated by
"honour," and are
therefore acknowledged and
approved by the world, while the outraged
sympathy
takes refuge in a profound melancholy, the more telling
and
sublime for being scarcely expressed, and revealing
the world in all its
terrible nullity. Such is the wondrous
and imposing experience which
Calderon presents
to us in magic creative charm. No poet of the world
is his equal in this respect. The Catholic religion
intervenes as a
mediator, and nowhere has it attained
greater significance than here, where
the opposition
between the world and sympathy is pregnant, sharp,
and
plastic, as in no other nation. How significant
too is the fact that nearly
all the great Spanish poets
in the latter half of their lives retired into
the Church,
and that then, after complete ideal subjugation of
life
they could depict that very life with certainty,
purity, warmth, and
clearness, as they never could
before when actively engaged in it. Their
most
graceful, most whimsical creations are from the time
of their
clerical retirement. Beside this paramount
phenomenon all other national
literature seems
insignificant.
[Footnote 25: No. 255 of the _Collected Letters_.]
Wagner knew Greek, but seems to have read his Aeschylos and Sophokles
in
the excellent translation of Donner. From his seventeenth year
onwards, his
exclusive occupation with music and the drama left him
little time for the
study of classics. Yet he was a born classic. In
the earlier period of his
school life, when at the _Kreuz-Schule_
in Dresden he showed remarkable
aptitude for Greek, and translated
half the Odyssey into German as a
voluntary task when he was about
thirteen. Unfortunately in the next year his
family moved to Leipzig,
where his zeal was checked by the pedantry of
schoolmasters, and his
studies soon began to take another direction, but
throughout his life
he remained ardently in sympathy with Hellenic culture.
His remarks on
the Oedipus tragedies of Sophokles are well worthy the
attention of
those who value the poetry above the letter of a work. He
was
attracted to the Spanish and to the Hellenic drama because they
were
akin to himself. He was himself cast in a tragic mould, in that of
the
heroes of Aeschylos, Sophokles, and Calderon. Prometheus
suffering
torments rather than submit to the will of an iniquitous ruler
is
Wagner voluntarily sacrificing all that made life dear to him
rather
than adopt the conventional falsehoods of society. He is
Prince
Fernando suffering disgrace and imprisonment rather than betray
his
country. He is Tristan and Isolde going willingly to death rather
than
sully their honour.
The origin of the Tristan myth is lost in antiquity.
The Welsh
Triads, of unknown date, but very ancient, know of one Drystan ab Tallwch,
the
lover of Essylt the wife of March, as a steadfast lover and a
mighty swineherd. It is indubitably Celtic-Breton, Irish, or Welsh.
There were different versions of the story, into the shadowy history
of which we need not enter.
The only one which concerns us is that of
a certain Thomas.
Of his French poem fragments alone have come down
to us.
But we have three different versions based upon it:
The Middle-High-German poem of Gottfried von Strassburg,
composed about 1210-20.
An old-Norse translation made in 1226 by command
of King Hakon.
A Middle-English poem of the thirteenth
century preserved in the so-called Auchinleck MS. of the library of
the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh, and familiar to English
readers from the edition published by Sir Walter Scott.
The poem was
probably composed by the famous Thomas the Rhymer of Ercyldoune or Earlstown
in
Berwickshire.
A reliable edition by G. P. MacNeill has been
published by the Scottish Text Society, with an introduction giving a full
and interesting account of the legend in its various recensions.
In these versions the story of Tristano and Isotta has nothing
whatever to do with the Arthurian court or the quest of the Grail.
It
became exceedingly popular and was told again and again in varied forms
in every language in Europe.
But even before this, Sir Tristan
had sometimes been included among the Knights of the Round Table,
such honour being deemed indispensable to the dignity of every knight
who had any pretensions to fame.
Wagner was well versed in all the Tristan literature, and composed
his own version for the stage out of the materials which he found.
In order to understand his way of dealing with his subject-matter it
will be worth our while to follow the outlines of the old story, which
is essentially the same in all the three versions, though the
incidents, and especially the names, are somewhat varied.
We shall follow in
the main the most important of the three, that of Gottfried
von Strassburg, so far as it goes, with occasional supplementary
additions from the Norse and English.
THE STORY:
There was a certain king, in Parmenia, named "Riwalin Kanelengres" (in
the
Norse saga he is King in Bretland; in the English he is called
Rouland
rise, King of Ermonric).
The king leaves his own country in the charge
of his marshal, Rual li foitenant,
He joins the court of the powerful
King MARCO of Cornwall "and of England" in Tintajol.
There, in Cornwall, the king falls in
love with Blanscheflur (Norse: Blensinbil), the king MARCO's sister.
But, on
his being recalled to his own land to meet an invasion from his
enemy Morgan, the sister of King Mark begs the king of Parmenia to take her with him.
"I have loved thee to
mine own hurt," the sister to King Marco says.
"But for my being pregnant I would prefer
to remain here and bear my grief, but now I choose to die rather than that
thou, my beloved, shouldst be put to a shameful death.
Our child will be
fatherless.
I have deceived myself and am lost."
She is then married to Riwalin
and placed for safety in his stronghold Kanoël while the king marches to battle.
The king
is killed.
King Marco's sister, on hearing the news, dies after giving birth to a son
who, in allusion to the
melancholy circumstances of his birth, is named "Tristan".
Tristan is instructed by his tutor Kurwenal in the seven arts and
the seven kinds of music, and in all languages.
One day he is carried
off by some pirates, and, on a furious storm arising, he is put on
shore
alone on the coast of Cornwall, and finds his way to King
Marco's court at Tintajol, where he is honourably received.
Meanwhile his marshal, Rual li foitenant, has set out in search of him,
and, after wandering through many countries, arrives disguised as a beggar at
Tintajol.
Tristan brings him before King MARCO, to whom he
relates the whole
story of Tristan's birth and parentage, which he has
hitherto kept secret,
showing how TRISTAN is King Marco's nephew.
TRISTAN is
now overwhelmed with
honours, and dubbed a knight, but is soon obliged
to return to Parmenia, where he belongs on the paternal side, to
fight the old enemy Morgan.
TRISTAN is victorious
and after some time returns to
Cornwall, where he finds that the
country is now subjugated by the King of
IRELAND -- Gurmun the Proud --
who has sent his brother-in-law, MOROLDO, to
collect tribute -- 30 fair youths -- from the Cornishmen.
Tristan, on
arriving, at once challenges Morold to decide the question of tribute in
single combat
with himself.
They fight.
Tristan is wounded.
Moroldo calls upon Tristan
to desist from fighting, saying that his weapon is poisoned, and that
the
wound cannot be healed except by his sister ISOTTA, the wife of
King Gurmun.
Tristan replies by renewing the attack.
Morold falls,
and Tristan severs his head from his body, and, on Morold's
discomfited
followers embarking hastily for their own country, Tristan throws
them
the head, scornfully bidding them take it as tribute to their
king.
But on their reaching Ireland, ISOTTA the queen, and ISOTTA the Fair,
her daughter, cover the HEAD of MOROLDO with kisses, and treasure it up to mind them
of vengeance upon the slayer of their kinsman.
In the skull they find
a splinter from the sword, which they keep.
Tristan's wound refuses to heal, and he sets off for Ireland accompanied
by Kurwenal to be treated by Queen Isotta.
On reaching Dublin, Tristan
puts off alone to the shore.
In a small boat, taking only his harp with him.
He introduces himself to Queen Isotta as a merchant named Tantris -- i.e. Tris-tan reversed.
TRIS-TANO
TANO-TRIS.
Queen Isotta (Isotta's mother) receives "TANOTRIS"
favourably, heals his
wound, and appoints him tutor to her daughter, ISOTTA, at
last, on his earnest
entreaty, dismissing him to return to his home.
On returning to Mark's court TRISTAN finds that intrigues have arisen and
a
party has been formed to overthrow him.
As the nephew of the
childless king, TRISTAN
is the next heir to the throne of Cornwall.
But,
being in fear of his
life, TRISTAN persuades Marco to marry, that he may
beget a child to be his
successor.
Reluctantly King Marke permits him
to return to Ireland to obtain
"the maiden bright as blood on snow,"
Isotta LA BELLA.
-- "by cunning, stealth, or
robbery," says the Norse.
There now follows an episode of the regular type.
On Tristan reaching
Ireland disguised as a merchant, he finds the country
being ravaged by
a terrible "serpent," and the king has promised his daughter
with half
of his kingdom to whoever shall rid them of the scourge.
Tristan
slays
the monster, a certain "Trugsess" or steward, who wishes to
marry
Isotta, claims to have achieved the deed, but his fraud is
exposed
through the machinations of the women.
Queen Isot and her
daughter
have recognized in Tristan their former acquaintance Tantris, and
when
polishing his armour the princess finds the sword with a gap in
its
blade exactly fitting the splinter which she has taken from
Morold's
skull.
She now realizes who Tristan is, and, filled with anger
and
hatred, she goes with the sword to where Tristan is in his
bath,
determined to wreak instant vengeance upon the slayer of her
uncle.
Tristan cries for mercy, obscurely hinting that he is able to
reward
her richly if she will only spare his life.
ISOTTA's mother (also, confusingly, called ISOTTA) enters with
her
attendant or companion, Brangäne (Norse: Bringvet).
Matters
are
discussed, Brangäne argues with great eloquence that he will be
much
more useful to them alive than dead, and at last a bargain is
struck.
In return for his life Tristan promises that he will find the
Princess
Isot a husband who is much richer than her father.
They all kiss
and
are reconciled, the princess alone hesitating to make peace with
the
man whom she hates in her heart.
Everything is speedily arranged,
King
Gurmun consenting to the marriage of his daughter to his
country's
enemy, the slayer of his kinsman.
Before they depart on the voyage to Cornwall, Queen Isot brews
a
philtre, which she entrusts to Brangäne, directing her to administer
it
to King Marke and his bride on the day of their wedding.
On the
ship Isotta
continues to nurse her hatred for Tristan.
"Why do you hate me?"
TRISTANO asks.
"Did you not slay my uncle?"
"That has been expiated."
"And yet I hate you."
By and by they are thirsty, and a careless
attendant finding the love-potion
handy, gives it to them to drink.
At
once they are overcome with the most
ardent LOVE for each other.
-- the love potion was meant by ISOTTA's mother to be drunk by ISOTTA LA BELLA and her future husband, RE MARCO.
Brangäne is drawn into the secret -- that ISOTTA LA BELLA loves TRISTANO, and on
reaching Cornwall, is sent to take Isot's place in King Marke's bed.
The king does not note the difference.
It will not be worth our while to follow the details of the rest of
the
story, which is made up of a series of shameless tricks played by
the lovers
upon King Marke, whereby they are enabled to enjoy their
love together in
secret.
At last Tristan is banished the court, and
takes refuge with a duke
of Arundel in Sussex, named Jovelin, who has
a daughter, named Isot of the
White Hand, of whom he becomes
enamoured.
Here Gottfried's story ends,
unfinished, but it is
continued in the other versions.
Isot of the White Hand
is married to
Tristan, but remains, for some reason, a virgin. This should appeal to Wagner.
We can omit the adventures with
giants,
etc., which follow, but the end must be related.
Tristan has
been
wounded in a fray, and again no one can heal the wound but his
former
love, Isot the Fair.
A messenger is sent to bring her, with
orders
that if he has been successful he shall hoist a blue-and-white
sail
for a signal as the ship approaches; if unsuccessful, a black one.
She
comes, and the blue-and-white sail is seen.
But Isot of the
White
hand, out of jealousy, informs Tristan that the sail is a black
one.
Uttering the name "Isotta", he expires.
She enters too late, and dies
with
her arms around him.
"And it is related that Isot of the White
Hand,
Tristan's wife, caused them to be buried on opposite sides of
the
church, that they might not be together in death.
But it came to
pass
that an oak grew from the grave of each, and the oaks grew so high
that
their branches twined together above the roof."
*****************************************************
Such is the story from which we are asked to believe that Wagner
drew
the materials for his Tristan drama.
The earlier part of
Gottfried's
story is not unskilfully told.
All that relates to Riwalin and
the
birth of Tristan is worthy to stand beside the best products of
German
mediaeval poetry.
But from the time when Isot and her
intriguing
mother enter on the scene the story is as dull as it is IMMORAL.
What sane-minded person can possibly take an interest in a succession
of childish tricks played by two love-sick boobies upon a half-witted
old man?
The plot is trivial in the extreme, and the characters
are contemptible.
Most contemptible of all are the hero and the
heroine.
The spectacle of a knight on his knees before two women,
imploring them to have mercy upon him, and, in return for his life, promising
to find a rich husband for one of them would be hard to match.
Add to this
the constant obtrusion of the poet's own personality, with his
moral
reflections and trite philosophy, one can only wonder how the
much admired
epic can ever have been listened to with patience.
Deep indeed must culture
have sunk at the courts of Germany when princes and nobles could take
pleasure in such fustian while they possessed the stories of the great epics,
the Nibelungenlied, the Gudrunlied, and the delicate lyrics of Walther von
der Vogelweide.
Wagner's procedure in dealing with such a story as this is that
of Siegfried with the sword.
Instead of trying to patch and adapt he
melts
the whole down to create something entirely new out of the
material.
Wagner's
story is not the same as that of "Thomas" and
Gottfried, if for no other
reason than that he has only one Isolde.
Whatever dramatic interest the older
story may possess lies in there being _two_ Isoldes, and in Tristan's
desertion of one for the other, of an unlawful mistress for a lawful wife.
It
seems from certain remarks of Wagner that he at first intended to
preserve this feature of the original, but discarded it as the emotional
unity of his subject-matter grew upon him.
Hence Especially Wagner's remark on the kinship of the Tristan
and Siegfried myths (_Ges. Schr._, vi. 379), for the kinship lies in the
feature I have mentioned, the desertion of one love for another.
The essential feature of Wagner's drama is that the love of the hero
and
heroine remains unsatisfied.
Their motives are consequently quite
different
from what they are in Gottfried, and all the complex
intrigue which is the
chief interest of the older story falls away of
necessity.
On the other hand
he has retained from Gottfried much more
than the names of the persons, many
subordinate motives, not vital to
the story, and likely to be unnoticed by
many, but which his skilled
eye detected as effective for scenic
representation.
Such are:
-- Isolde's hatred and violent denunciations of Tristan
before they drink the
philtre
---------------- Gottfr. 14539, 11570),[27]
-- Brangäne's distress
and remorse at
the effect of her trick (11700, 12060)
-- he play upon his
name,
"Tantris" for "Tristan."
Kufferath quotes--unfortunately
without giving a reference--a _Minnelied_ of Gottfried, which is
obviously
reproduced in the second act, where the lovers keep harping
upon the words
"mein und dein."
Many references which are obscure in
Wagner are explained in
Gottfried's epic, such as the circumstances of
Tristan's first visit to
Isolde in Ireland, with the splinter in
Morold's skull.
Even the description
of the boat in which he came as
"klein und arm" is accounted for by Gottfried
(7424 seq.).
Tristan's
motives for insisting upon Marco's marriage are, as we
gather from
casual indications, the same as those set forth in Gottfried.
He
has
been entangled in political intrigues.
Utterly free himself from
any
sordid or selfish motive, he insists upon Marke's marriage as the
only
possible means of obtaining tranquillity for his distracted
country,
whereas in Gottfried he acts under fear of assassination.
We quote from the German translation of Karl Pannier
in
Reclam, which is the most recent.]
Wagner's treatment of his material is worth a closer
consideration
because it is characteristic of his conception of the drama.
Like
every poet of the first order he regards it exclusively from the
moral
standpoint.
In a former chapter I drew a distinction between the
drama
which depends upon the play of human actions for their own sakes
and
that in which the interest is centred in the motives or characters
of
the actors. The character of any individual is only another name
for
his permanent will, the abiding metaphysical side of his being and
its
most direct expression is music, while words are the proper vehicle
of
the logical intellect. Gottfried's epic--the latter part of it I
mean,
with which alone we are concerned--is entirely spectacular in
the
sense in which I have used that term. The poet conducts us through
a
succession of incidents related as being interesting or amusing
in
themselves. Wagner, for reasons which I have explained, in
dramatizing
the story, went to the opposite extreme, and composed a work
so
entirely musical that it makes the impression of a gigantic
symphony.
Gottfried cares nothing for the moral characters of his
heroes.
Wooden, soulless puppets are sufficient for him so long as they
act
and react upon one another. But the drama which centres in
these
characters cannot be satisfied with nonentities; the poet
had
therefore to create them himself, and the incidents then dropped
out
as superfluous.
For a character to be poetically interesting it is not necessary that
it
should be faultless.
But it must be human--intensely human, both in
its
virtues and in its defects; then the large-hearted spectator can
reverence
its nobility and sympathize with its shortcomings without
his aesthetic or
moral faculties being outraged. Some loftiness of
purpose there must be in a
dramatic hero, something which raises us
out of ourselves and calls forth
feelings of worship and awe in spite
of what seem to be his errors. "Es irrt
der Mensch so lang er
lebt"--"It is not the finding of truth, but the honest
search for it
that profits"; the spectacle of a noble soul striving
against
adversities and often failing, but never crushed, is one which
touches
the heart most deeply, and is the proper subject of tragedy. Above
all
the hero must be truthful; we must not be always on the watch to
find
him out unawares, as in actual life.
Wagner's drama has been often described as a story of adultery.
We
are
even told that it would have no interest were it not a tale of
illicit
love, and so it is regarded by nine out of ten of those who
witness
the performance without having closely studied the text. That such
a
notion should prevail in spite of the clearness of the text on
this
point is due to the fact that most people can only conceive of a
drama
as spectacular. They expect incidents, and, finding none, they
seek
for pruriency. All they see is a man and woman in passionate love
for
each other without any hope of ever being married, so they conclude
it
must come under the familiar heading of illicit love. The difficulty
of
the language is no doubt partly responsible for this gross
misapprehension,
and the music gives no help. It tells of the passion,
but can say nothing
about its legality. Of adultery or illicit love
there can be no question in
Wagner's _Tristan_, if for no other
reason than that Isolde is not married to
King Marke, and owes him no
allegiance. She has been carried off to be
married to him, but that is
quite a different thing. Are we to suppose that
after all that
happened on board the ship she consented to become the wife of
King
Marke? Certainly the text gives us no authority to suppose anything
so
incredible; we only learn from some words of King Marke in the
second
act that she is still an inviolate virgin. Even if we could
believe
the gentle and chivalrous Marke capable of committing such an
outrage
upon a woman as to go through a form of marriage with her against
her
will, no rite so performed would be binding by any law of God or
man.
Without her consent she cannot be the wife of King Marke. The
point
would not be of any real importance did it not seem to lend colour
to
the absurd charge of licentiousness and sensuality which has so
often
been brought against Wagner.
I have already remarked that an important difference between the
old
conception of the story and Wagner's lies in the fact that in
the
latter their love remains unsatisfied.
The notion of their
longing
being fulfilled is utterly foreign to Wagner's _Tristan_, nor
is
there at any moment the smallest hope of their ever possessing
each
other in this life. However consumed they are with love they
retain
perfect mastery over themselves. This is so abundantly clear from
the
first moment when their love is revealed--when they drink
the
potion--that it is inconceivable for a misunderstanding to occur
to
any one who follows the text with any attention. Were the
mistake
confined to vulgar and careless people who make up the bulk of
the
audience, however deplorable, it would be intelligible, but
from
scholars and professional critics we expect at least acquaintance
with
the text. An author who enjoys a deservedly high reputation as
an
authority upon Greek art and is widely read by young students writes
in
a recent work: "Any one at first hearing of Wagner's _Tristan und
Isolde_
would perceive that it was a most immoral subject.... It is
an artistic
glorification of adultery." How, one must ask, does the
learned author
reconcile this statement with Tristan's words just
before he drinks the
supposed poison: "Tristan's Ehre--höchste Treu'"?
What is the meaning of the
whole dialogue of the second act, of
Tristan's address to Isolde at the end,
and of her reply to him when
both go forth to die? How does it come that at
last, when all
obstacles have been surmounted, when nothing more hinders the
lovers
from full possession of one another, he deliberately puts an end
to
his own life? This and much more could only be explained by
supposing
that Wagner wrote, in operatic fashion, words without meaning, with
an
eye solely to stage effect. It is the old story! Wagner having
been
once written down as the poet of licence and immorality, the
facts
have to be altered to suit the theory.
Tristan's crime is indeed in the eyes of a chivalrous soul a far blacker
one than that of adultery.
He has betrayed his friend, his sovereign, his
kinsman, his benefactor, and has broken his faith
towards the woman who
trusted him. He is so completely overcome with
love for the woman whom he
himself has brought to be the bride of his
uncle, that no going back is
possible. But one course is yet open to
him to save his honour. He may die;
and he accordingly seeks death
with full consciousness and determination.
Three times he tries to rid
himself of life: first when he drinks the
supposed poison with Isolde;
again when he drops his sword in the duel with
Melot; the third time
he succeeds, when he tears off his bandages at the
decisive moment,
when no escape is possible but by instant death.
Love for its own sake is not a subject for dramatic
treatment.
Love-stories are the bane of love. In real life we do not talk
about
our love-affairs, most men thinking that they have quite enough to
do
with their own without caring to hear those of other people. Still
less
do we wish to hear the vapid inanities which seem proper to that
condition
poured forth on the stage. I know of no European drama of
any importance
which treats of a prosperous and happy love as its
principal subject; it
needs the delicate pen of a Kálidása to make it
endurable. It does not of
course follow that love is to be altogether
banished from dramatic art. The
dramatist surveys the whole field of
human life and could not, if he wished,
afford to neglect the most
powerful and universal of human motives. All
depends upon the
treatment, and no subject is more beset with difficulties.
The earlier
Greek dramatists, with their usual unerring judgment, avoided
sexual
love, i.e. the love between a young woman and a young man,
although
love-stories and love-lyrics were well known to them. The only
play
which has come down to us where love is a predominant motive is
the
_Trachiniae_. The love of Deianeira is the ardent longing of a
highly
emotional young woman and mother, but its very intensity brings
disaster on
both herself and her husband. Broadly speaking, love is a
legitimate motive
for the dramatist when it is used, not as a purpose
in itself, but as a
setting for something else. In the words of
Corneille, "l'amour ne doit être
que l'ornement, et non l'âme de nos
pièces," and this is how it is generally
employed by the best
dramatists. The love of Benedict and Beatrice, for
example, is simply
a setting for their witty talk and repartee. On the
Spanish stage love
is often a setting for entertaining intrigue, as in Lope
de Vega's
_El Perro del Hortelano_. In Schiller's _Wallenstein_ the
love
of Max and Thekla is a refreshing breath of pure air through the
abyss of
treachery and corruption; almost the same applies to _Romeo
and Juliet_, and
in both the end is death. Of the Elizabethans,
Ford seems to have had a
predilection for love-plots, but all, as far
as I remember, end tragically. I
have selected, as they occurred to
me, a few representative plays from the
dramatic literature of
different countries; an exhaustive inquiry would, I
feel sure, only
confirm the view that a preference for love subjects for
their own
sake is a sure sign of decadence in the drama. Goethe, who in
his
youth swore to dedicate his life to the service of
love,
and--unhappily--kept his vow; Goethe, who nauseates us with love
in
his romances and lyrics, who even in the Eternal City cannot forget
his
worship of "Amor" and his visits to his "Liebchen," never misuses
love in his
dramas. He tells us sarcastically that on the stage, when
the lovers are at
last united, the curtain falls quickly and covers up
the sequel.
A work of art like "Tristan und Isolde" can never be understood
by the
norms which prevail in society.
By the social theory, marriage
is a contract
between two parties for their mutual advantage; it is
inspired by a refined
form of selfishness.
That spontaneous
self-immolation which marks the love of
pure and vigorous natures lies
beyond its intelligence.
The law is satisfied
if only the parties
subscribe their names in solemn agreement before a proper
civil or
ecclesiastical authority. It could not well be otherwise, for
the
true-born _Aphrodite Ourania_ will not submit to any bonds but
her
own. I should be indeed misunderstood if it were thought that I
was
advocating licence in any form whatever. What is called
"free-love" is pure
sensuality, the bastard _Aphrodite Pandemos_.
Nothing is more sacred to me
than the marriage vow, but I hold that
the marriage vow itself needs the
sanction of love, and that when this
is absent, or has broken down in the
stress of life, I say--not that
sin is justified, but that love will take
vengeance upon those who
have insulted her name. Lovers whose object is
sensual enjoyment with
as little personal inconvenience as possible, who
break the law while
wishing to escape the legal penalty, have nothing in
common with
Wagner's _Tristan und Isolde_. Those who love for the sake
of
loving, whose love is stronger than life, who readily and
cheerfully
accept death as the due penalty of sin, these, and these alone,
are
beyond the pale of human conventions; they can only be judged by
the
laws of a higher morality than that of human tribunals.
Some details of the story we must construct for ourselves, and
are
entitled to do so when they are not essential.
The poet is himself
not
always conscious of all the bearings of what he composes.
He works
by
inspiration, not by reason, and we know that Wagner himself
was
sometimes under singular delusions with regard to his own works.
Two
questions will occur to everybody at the beginning:
1. Has
Isolde
started on the voyage to be the bride of King Marke with her
own
consent? 2. Does she love Tristan before they drink the potion?
Many
will answer these questions quite positively, the first in
the
negative, the second in the affirmative.
But the indications are
very
shadowy indeed in the text, and the old story, the only source
which
could throw any light on the question, tells the contrary in
both
cases. Perhaps it will be contended that the constant presence of
the
love-motive at decisive moments leaves no doubt that they love
each
other from the beginning. To this I reply that it is not possible
for
a musical strain by itself to prove anything. It can only call to
mind
as a reminiscence something with which it has been
definitely
connected before. We cannot do better than leave such questions to
be
answered by each according to his own judgment. Like a skilful
painter
Wagner has drawn secondary incidents with a shadowy outline in
order
that the attention may be concentrated on the main features. The
main
thing is to realize that they are inessential, but those who feel
the
need of greater clearness may reconstruct for themselves. My
own
belief is that their feelings at the beginning of the first act are
a
very subtle and complex mixture, of which they could not then have
given
a very clear account even to themselves, and that the poet has
therefore,
with consummate artistic skill, purposely left them
unexplained.
The one decisive and all-important motive of the drama is the LOVE
of
the hero and the heroine in conflict with Tristan's HONOUR.
And on this
the whole force of the musical torrent is concentrated.
In the end love must
prevail.
Love, with Wagner, is the divine possession
which dominates every
noble heart, but here it is incompatible with
the conditions of human life,
and of that honour which is its very
breath.
And so at the end, as the lovers
pass through their death-agony clasped in each other's embrace, the
love-motive soars triumphant and joyous above the surging billows of the
orchestra, and
they are united in the more glorious love beyond, in the love
that is stronger than death.
I have now to speak of Wagner's much discussed pessimism.
At
first
sight it might seem a strange contradiction to speak of pessimism in
a
man who composed _Die Meistersinger_, whose love of all things
beautiful
was a passion, whose faith in human nature, unshaken by
every
disillusionment, would almost seem like madness, did we not know
that it was
that very faith which finally carried him through to
victory. Wagner's
pessimism was not borrowed from Schopenhauer, but
was his own, as it is, in
one form or another, the creed of every
thinking man, the foundation of every
satisfying philosophy and art.
Pessimism does not consist in looking only at
the dark side of things,
and closing the eyes to all that is beautiful; that
is blindness and
ignorance, not philosophy. Pessimism is on the contrary the
outcome of
an intense love, of a passionate delight in the harmony, the
fitness,
and beauty of nature, inspiring a keenly sympathetic soul. He
cannot
close his eyes to the fact that all this lovely world is made
to
perish; that its individuals are engaged in a fierce warfare upon
one
another; each preys upon its fellows with a savagery which shuns
no
cruelty and recks of no crime. Love itself in its mortal
embodiment
withers and turns to evil.
His moral sense tells him that this
ought
not to be; there must be some delusion; is it in nature or is it
in
his own understanding? As a rule we put this darker aspect of
nature
out of sight; we exclude the poor, the vicious, the unhappy from
our
company, because they would hinder us in our mad pursuit of
pleasure,
and it needs the strength and sincerity which accompany the advance
of
years to bring a revolt against the selfish blindness of our youth.
As
we watch and learn from the terrible tragedy of nature, as we
realize
more and more the baseness and depravity of human life, our
faith
becomes stronger that beauty, truth, righteousness, are eternal
and
cannot be born only that they may perish; that man is not "a wild
and
ravening beast held in check only by the bonds of civilization,"
but
is a divine and immortal being. Our vision gradually opens and
we
learn more clearly that all which we once took for pleasure and
for
pain are unreal, visionary reflections from a higher and
purer
existence where all creation is united in the eternal embrace of
love.
For those who, through courage and sincerity, through faith and
hope
and love, have attained the higher insight, have seen the very face
of
Brahm behind the delusive veil of Mâyâ, there is no discord
or
contradiction in all this; despair gives way to a resigned quietism,
to
that "peace of God which passeth all understanding." Such is the
ineffable
insight of the artist, and no poetry is satisfying which
does not spring from
this source. Wagner in the letter I quoted
before, speaks of the cheerful
playfulness of Spanish poets after they
had adopted the ascetic life. The
philosophic pessimist is not a
fretful and malignant caviller who sneers at
the follies of others
because he thinks himself so much wiser than they. Any
one may note
among the ascetics of his acquaintance, those who take no
pleasure in
what delights others and live a life of self-denial
and
abstemiousness, how cheerful is their conversation, how bright
and
steadfast their glance, how their tolerance of the follies of
others
is only equalled by the saintliness of their own lives.
Such is Wagner's pessimism; it is the pessimism of the
Vedânta
philosophy; that is to say, it is most clearly formulated in
that
system, and in the Upanishads upon which it rests, but really it
is
the common basis of all religions.[28] It breathes in the poems
of
Hafiz, in the philosophy of Parmenides, Plato, and the Stoics, in
the
profound wisdom of Ecclesiastes, in mediaeval mysticism, and the
faith
of the early Christian Church. Buddhism and Christianity are
both
pessimist in their origin. It is not an "opinion," i.e. a creed
or
formula which may be weighed and either accepted or rejected, but is
an
insight which, when once understood and felt, is as self-evident as
the air
we breathe. But it is an insight which can only be attained
through moral
discipline, never through the rationalism of vulgar and
self-seeking minds.
Nor is it for those who are enlightened at all
moments of their lives, but
only in times of poetic exaltation, when
the faculties are awake and become
creative.
[Footnote 28: Except Islam, which is rather a moral discipline than
a
religion.]
In this chapter I propose to consider certain criticisms which
are
often made on Wagner's treatment of the drama, which differ from
some
of those mentioned before, in being intelligible and worthy
of
respect, since they have not been made maliciously or
through
ignorance. In so far as they are invalid they rest
upon
misunderstandings which can easily be accounted for by
Wagner's
unparalleled originality, by the novelty of his art,
necessarily
involving a wide departure from the classic standards by which
alone
the critic can form his judgment. To comprehend his work we must
give
up many of those cherished canons which hitherto have
passed
unquestioned.
Wagner's _Tristan_ has often--even by Lichtenberger--been
described as a
philosophic work; and as abstract thought or
philosophy, it is said, is
foreign to art, a work which admits it must
be condemned.
Let us first
understand what is meant by philosophy.
It
is surely a train of thought in
the mind of the spectator, not in the
object which he contemplates. Anything
in the world may be the subject
of philosophic thought, or may suggest it;
there is plenty of
philosophy to be drawn from a daisy, but we do not
therefore call a
daisy a philosophic flower. So, too, we may philosophize
about
Wagner's _Tristan_, but the philosophy is our own; it is not in
the
work. What is meant no doubt is that the work itself is not a
concrete
reality, but an exposition of an abstract conception.
Philosophy has only
herself to blame if abstractions are in the naïf,
ordinary mind opposed to
realities, for it is unhappily true that
nearly the whole of our current
philosophy does consist of
abstractions which are mere "Hirngespinnste,"
rooted in words and not
in nature; philosophy itself has in art become a term
of reproach from
being associated with unreality. We must, however,
distinguish between
notions which are real but difficult to grasp and those
which cannot
be grasped, because there is nothing in them, and this
distinction
cannot be made without thought and labour from which the ordinary
mind
shrinks, being too indolent or indifferent. Poetry is not opposed
to
philosophy, and is not the less poetry when it concerns itself
with
those higher notions which are outside the range of our more
ordinary
comprehension, [Greek: ho¯s philosophias ousaes megistaes
monsikaes].
Both poetry and philosophy deal in abstractions, only in both
the
abstractions must be true, i.e. must be true general statements
of
ideas found in nature; when this is the case poetry and philosophy
are
indistinguishable, except by mere external and conventional
features. Under
which heading are we to class, for example, Plato's
_Republic_? Or the
_Upanishads_? or the book of _Job_? They
are generally thought of as
philosophy, but all who have even partially
understood them will feel their
poetic spell. Or if we take our greatest
poems, to mention only some of those
most familiar to us: _Paradise
Lost_, Goethe's _Faust_ or Marlowe's,
Tennyson's _In Memoriam_,
Fitzgerald's _Rubáiyát_--all of these might be just
as well classed under
philosophy as under poetry. Only untrue philosophy is
unpoetical, that
which has grown out of the reason of man. Abstractions
manufactured
by human reason are no more philosophy than an account of
centaurs
and gryphons is natural history. They are not to be found in
Wagner's
_Tristan_.
The particular philosophy which Wagner's _Tristan_ is supposed to
set
forth is that of Schopenhauer.
But Schopenhauer's doctrine of
Negation of
Will or Nirvâna--for it is identical with that of
Buddhism--is a negation of
existence itself absolutely.
The man who
puts an end to his own life does not
attain Nirvâna; he is not
dissatisfied with life in itself, but only with its
conditions, and he
passes through the endless cycle of Samsâra until the
moment arrives
when, sickened with the wearisome struggle, he longs for
complete
annihilation. The lovers in _Tristan_ look forward to a
renewed
existence beyond the grave, in the "realm of night," where, freed
from
the trammels of the senses their love will endure, purified from
the
pollution of human lust in glory undimmed by the sordid conditions
of
human life.
Sehnen hin zur heil'gen Nacht
Wo ur-ewig einzig wahr
Liebes-Wonne ihm lacht.
Such a future life would with Schopenhauer only be a renewal of
the
misery of existence in another form. It is the Christian, not
the
Buddhist, way of feeling that inspires the lovers.
Christianity
starts
from the insufficiency and misery of human life, but
contemplates
redemption therefrom by love, whereas Buddhism conceives of
no
possibility of redemption. Its release is annihilation, and it is
a
religion of despair, not of hope.
It would be interesting, if it did not take us too far from our
present
subject, to compare this conception of love with that of
Sokrates as set
forth in the _Symposium_ of Plato. Sokrates
believed fully in immortality,
but wisely refrained from speculating
on the conditions of existence after
death. His _Eros_ is
confined to this life, but none the less he treats it as
a divine
gift. Love is the mediator and interpreter between gods and men;
and
love of the beautiful, which manifests itself in the procreation
and
love of offspring, is the desire for immortality, the children
being
the continuation of the immortal part of their parents.[29] This
is
the lower mystery. The higher, which is not revealed to all, is
the
gradual expansion of love until it comprehends the eternal Idea.
The
beauty which we love in the individual becomes a stepping-stone
from
which we may rise to the love of all beautiful things, passing
from
one to many, from beautiful forms to beautiful deeds, from them
to
beautiful thoughts, laws, institutions, sciences, until we
contemplate
the vast sea of beauty in the boundless love of wisdom, a beauty
which
does not grow and perish, but is eternal. There could be no
finer
commentary on Wagner's _Tristan_ than this wondrous speech
of
Sokrates in the _Symposium_.
[Footnote 29: It is worth noting in passing how this
beautiful
conception of Plato coincides with views expressed in our own day
by a
scientific man of the highest distinction, the foremost
living
representative of Darwinian evolution, Professor Weismann. See
his
_Essays on Heredity_.]
It is true, however paradoxical it may seem, that Wagner's
very
stupendous power is itself a source of weakness; it is too great
for
more limited minds to grasp. If love is really the one divine fact
of
human existence, to which all else is as nothing; and if at the
same
time a pure and burning love resolutely followed of necessity leads
to
destruction, then how are we to live at all? Is this life to count
for
nothing? I shall not attempt to answer this question. I cannot
bring
the truth that all noble and generous actions are bound to end
in
failure, to bring death upon their doers, within the scheme of
a
divinely ordered universe. I will only observe that it is a
truth
tacitly acknowledged by all who compose tragedies or take pleasure
in
witnessing them. How else could we endure to contemplate the
failure
and destruction of a Lear, a Wallenstein, a Deianira, an
Antigone?
Here our attempts to extract philosophy out of the Tristan drama
must
cease.
My only purpose has been to show that its abstractions are
warm
with the living breath of reality, and whatever is beyond this must
be
left for the student to carry out for himself, from the point of
view
of his own mind. Such exercises are interesting and salutary to
the
philosophic mind, but for minds trained in the modern formulas
of
"self-interest" and "liberty" they are only possible after a
complete
reconstruction of the foundations of knowledge, a "revaluation of
all
values."
The decisive part played by the magic love-potion has given rise to much
comment.
Hostile critics ridicule it, and condemn the whole work as turning
on an absurdity, while those who are favourable try to explain it away, but
their explanations have always seemed to me more
unnatural than the thing
explained.
Why may we not accept it as it is evidently intended?
In art at
least, rationalism has not yet--thanks
perhaps to Shakespearian
traditions--prevailed so far that we must
exclude supernatural motives
altogether.
Wagner could scarcely have used the myth and the names of Tristan
and Isolde without introducing
the philtre with which they have always been
associated.
It would be
just as reasonable to explain away the ghost in
_Hamlet_ as the
love-potion of Isolde.
If we accept one we can accept the
other, for
in both the prime mover of the tragedy is SUPER-NATURAL.
Lessing,
in
comparing the ghost of Hamlet's father with the ghost of Ninus
in
Voltaire's _Semiramis_, has some remarks which are equally valid
for
all supernatural motives in the drama.
The principle which he
evolves is that
a supernatural being to be admissible must interest us
for its own sake as a
living and acting personage.
In other words, it
must be an organic portion of
the play, not a mere machine brought in
for stage effect. "Voltaire treats
the apparition of a dead person as
a miracle, Shakespeare as a perfectly
natural occurrence."
I do not
think that the difference between what is
allowable and what is not
could be more clearly put than in this last
sentence.
We are not obliged to believe that the potion is the SOLE cause of
their LOVE;
that they hated each other as deadly enemies at one moment and
became
lovers at the next.
Such a notion would be altogether too crude.
We are justified in supposing that behind Isolde's rage and
Tristan's disdain there lies a deeper feeling, as yet unconfessed
but sufficiently deep-rooted to endure when the anger of the moment
has
passed away, and that this is what is effected by the draught.
A very marked characteristic or mannerism of Wagner's dramas is
the
tedious length of explanation in some scenes or soliloquies, and
they
have often been severely criticized.
There is one in _Tristan_, King
Marke's speech at the end of Act II., and I may say at once that
after all
that has been said the objections cannot be entirely set
aside.
It numbers
nearly two hundred bars in slow tempo, and takes
about ten minutes.
The
argument generally used in defending it is that
the action is laid within,
and the interest is in the music.
But the
objection--to me at least--is not
that the action is at a standstill,
but that the scene is undramatic, and
much of it unmitigated prose.
The action has stood still nearly all through Act II,
but no one
would wish to miss a bar of any other portion.
The king's
reproaches
of his friend and vassal for his treachery, and the music with
its
gloomy orchestration, mostly of horns, bassoons, viola, and
lower
strings, with occasional English horn, and the deepest notes of
the
clarinet interspersed with wails of the bass-clarinet, are
profoundly
touching and proceed naturally out of the situation.
Had there
been
nothing more than these it might have been much shorter, but
Wagner
has taken the occasion to try to throw some light upon
the
circumstances that preceded the events of the play.
If they were to
be
told they should have been told earlier.
Here we have forgotten
our
perplexity at the beginning and are now thrilled with the
situation,
not at all in the mood for hearing explanations.
Nor does it
really explain.
If the hearer does not already know why Isolde was brought
to be the bride of King Marke, he will scarcely learn it from
Marke's speech.
When we spoke just now of Wagner's predilection for long soliloquies
and
prosy explanations as a mannerism, we do not think that I was
expressing ourselves too strongly.
Thus in _Die Walküre_, in Wotan's
long speech to
Brünnhilde in Act II., he sketches the main events of
_Das Rheingold_. In
_Siegfried_ the amusing riddle scene, a
reminiscence of the Eddic _Alvísmál_,
seems intended to relate
events which have gone before. In _Götterdämmerung_
it is
Siegfried who just before his death tells the story of the
preceding
evening.[30] In _Parsifal_ Gurnemanz explains all the
circumstances
to the Knappen. How undramatic are these explanations we
shall
realize when we compare them with such soliloquies as
Tannhäuser's
account of his pilgrimage or Siegmund's story of his life,
which, though
equally lengthy, keep us spellbound from the first bar to the
last,
because they directly lead up to and form part of the scene which
is
actually before us. Tannhäuser's wild aspect and manner,
Siegmund's
desolation and longing for community with other human beings, are
in
direct connection with the story told.
From which we may conclude that Wagner when composing
the
tetralogy contemplated the separate numbers being sometimes
performed singly.
For this the explanations are again inadequate. Much
better it would have
been to provide at the performance a short
printed or spoken introduction, a
plan which in my humble opinion
might well be adopted in most plays.]
I am, of course, only expressing an individual opinion, because I
feel
bound in giving a full account of the work to say how it appears
to
me; others may very probably feel it differently. It matters
little.
Even if I am right in thinking that Wagner has miscalculated
the
effect on the stage, _Tristan_ will still remain a work
immeasurably
superior to a thousand that are faultless.
"Art generally ... as such, is nothing but a noble and
expressive
language, invaluable as a vehicle of thought, but by itself
nothing.
"Art, properly so called, is no recreation; it cannot be learned
at
spare moments, nor pursued when we have nothing better to do. It is
no
handiwork for drawing-room tables, no relief of the ennui of
boudoirs;
it must be understood and undertaken seriously or not at all.
To
advance it, men's lives must be given, and to receive it,
their
hearts."
These words, among the first written for serious publication by
John
Ruskin when he was a young graduate of Oxford, are the text of
his
whole life's teaching.
"Daily and hourly," writes Carlyle, "the world natural grows out of
a
world magical to me.... Daily, too, I see that there is no true
poetry
but in reality."
More than two thousand years before Plato had written in the third
book
of his _Republic_ against the indifference to manly virtue
and the cult of a
languishing effeminacy in the poetry and art of his
day. He inveighs against
the [Greek: panarmonia] and [Greek:
poluchodia] of the musicians, by which we
may understand
over-instrumentation,--as if the Athenians even then had
their
Berliozes and Strausses--and continues (I quote from
Jowett's
translation): "Neither we nor our guardians whom we have to
educate
can ever become musical until we and they know the essential forms
of
temperance ([Greek: so¯phrosunae]), courage, liberality,
magnificence
([Greek: megalorepeia]), and their kindred, etc."
The teaching of all these three great masters, and I might
have
multiplied quotations from the works of the greatest--but only
from
those of the greatest--thinkers of ancient and modern times, is
the
same: that art is not a mere play of beautiful forms, but that
the
artist must know a truth and have been able to express it; that
his
work must be approved or condemned according as that truth
is
healthful or the reverse. It is the doctrine of sincerity, and
is
opposed to the common and weaker doctrine of "art for art's
sake"--i.e.
that art is self-contained, that we occupy ourselves with
it solely for the
pleasure which it affords through our senses, that
it has no didactic
purpose. By this latter view, beauty in art is an
idea quite distinct from
utility or morality; by the other, beauty,
utility, and morality are
fundamentally one, being all emanations from
the one supreme Idea of creation
named by Plato--"the Good," or "the
Good in itself," "the Idea of
Good."
Can we apply this distinction to music?
All the other arts derive
their
subject-matter from the material world, but Polyhymnia seems to
detach
herself from her sisters, to soar away from the things of this
earth, and to
dwell in the ethereal regions of pure ideality. The
objects of painting,
poetry, sculpture, etc., are those of our
surroundings; the artist only puts
the things familiar to us in nature
in a new light, and, by concentrating the
attention upon certain
aspects, reveals much that minds less poetic than his
had not noticed
before. The morality which these arts are able to convey is
the
morality of nature. But music is not concerned with any
material
objects; its means are rhythm, melodic intervals, harmony, all
purely
ideal existences, and seemingly all connected in some mysterious
way
with number, itself an immaterial idea of time. And although
the
manner of our perception of harmony has, to some extent, that
of
melody to a still smaller extent, been explained in our time
by
physiologists, the explanations only relate to the form of
our
perception. They show how, through the harmonic overtones, the mind
is
able to recognize the connection between a chord and the one
which
preceded it, but cannot tell why one progression of harmonies
is
pleasant, another the reverse, as Helmholtz himself was fully
aware.
How then can it be possible for music to be a vehicle of thought?
What
can it have to do with "temperance, courage, liberality"?
The question is not one which I can hope fully to answer within
these
pages, but it cannot be altogether passed over; we must know
something
of the nature of music, must have some clear notion of what it is
if
we are to understand its relation to language in the drama.
The
explanation given by Leibnitz that it is an _exercitium
arithmeticae
occultum nescientis se numerare animi_ is quite inadequate.
Music
is not a purely intellectual affection like that of number
and
proportion, but is in the highest degree emotional. The pleasure
which
we receive from contemplating a mathematical process of
great
complexity is altogether different from that of music. Highly
complex
as are the mathematical relations of the vibrations which
convey
musical tones from the instrument to the ear the final result of
those
relations, the impression on the rods of Corti's organ in the
Cochlea,
are as purely physiological as the impressions of touch.
Scientific,
i.e. inductive, research must always find an end at the point
where
the organs become too small for observation; it can throw no light
on
the nature of the impression transmitted from Corti's organ to
the
consciousness.
A suggestion has been put forward by Schopenhauer which may be viewed
as
an attempt to explain transcendentally the nature of music. It is
well known
that, according to Schopenhauer, a work of art represents
the (Platonic) Idea
of the object which it depicts, this Idea being
itself the first and highest
stage of objectivation of Will. Music is,
however, a direct objectivation of
Will, i.e. not through an Idea.
Music, therefore, is not like the other arts the image (Abbild) of
an
Idea, but an image of the Will itself, of which the Ideas are also
the
objectivity. This is why the impression which music makes upon us
is
so much more powerful and more penetrating than that of the other
arts,
for they tell only of the shadow, music of the substance. But
inasmuch as it
is the same will that objectivates itself, only in
quite different ways in
the Ideas and in music, so there results, not
indeed a _resemblance_, but
rather a _parallelism_, an _analogy_
between music and the Ideas which appear
in the world, multiplied
and imperfect as phenomena.
Beyond this we must not follow our author. Schopenhauer no
doubt
possessed a very keen sense for music, but his theoretical
education
was of the slightest, and his further remarks make the impression
of
his having read up _ad hoc_ some theoretical writer of his time.
But we
may accept his definition as at least a first step in the
inquiry.
The objective world lies before us in two forms, as light and as
sound.
From the visible world of light we receive all the data for
our
_understanding_, in the forms of time, space, and causality.
Beside it
lies the world of sound, in time alone, and appealing
directly to our inner
emotional consciousness, or, as we vaguely
express it, to the "_feelings_,"
which the light-world can only
reach indirectly through the understanding.
Both these worlds are
fundamentally one, differing only in their
manifestation, and, however
diverse they may appear, they are united by the
element common to
both, Rhythm. In general the language of the understanding
is
articulate speech, that of the emotions is music. The Unity
subsisting
between these two worlds, of understanding and emotion, of
language
and music, can only be realized intuitively; it can scarcely
be
demonstrated. But we have vivid illustrations of it in many
familiar
facts, for instance, that animals are able to make
themselves
understood to us and to each other without articulate language,
by
gesture and song. Thus we have the mutual relations of the two
dramatic
elements. Shortly stated, words tell the story, music the
feelings of the
persons. Gesture would seem to hold a place between
language and song,
appealing to the emotions as directly, and
sometimes almost as forcibly as
sound.[31] These relations are not so
sharply marked off from each other as
appears in the analysis. In a
highly wrought organism each part, while
keeping strictly to its own
functions, is nevertheless capable to some
extent, when necessity
arises, of extending its field. It is like a
well-disciplined army
where the duties of each unit are strictly laid down,
but where the
units themselves possess intelligence and are capable when
needful of
independent action, and a continual intercommunication between all
the
parts ensures their harmonious working.
[Footnote 31: The reader who is interested will find the subject
more
fully treated in Wagner's _Beethoven_.]
Applying what has been said to the drama let us select one incident
of
our work, the tearing down of the torch by Isolde in the second
act.
The words have told us that the torch is a signal of danger, and
now
the sounds of the hunt having died away, its removal informs
Tristan
that the way is clear for him to approach. More than this the
poet
could scarcely do in the words. To have expatiated upon the
awful
consequences which the lovers know full well must inevitably
follow,
on the conflict of hope, awe, heroic resolution, defiance of
the
certain death before them--to have told all this in words would
have
necessitated a long speech, most unnatural and undramatic at such
a
moment of tension, and could scarcely have avoided degenerating
into
bombast. By a few simple transitions, a few devices of
instrumentation,
the orchestra relates all this and much more, while
Isolde's
flute-motive, so exquisitely graceful and tender in the preceding
scene,
has now become a shriek of resolution bewildered but undaunted in
the
supreme crisis, above the savage call of the trumpets to death. So
far
the music; we _see_ in the torch hurled from its shining post and
left
expiring on the ground, a symbol of the drama that is concentrated
in
the act; of Tristan's glory extinguished in the realm of night. All
this in
the scenic representation forms one issue, the different elements
coalescing
in the hearer's mind into a single dramatic incident.
Wagner's view of the relation of music to words has been the subject
of
much controversy, often unhappily very heated. Before Wagner the
common
notion was that music in combination with words had only to
enforce them and
to accentuate their declamation. Such was the view of
Gluck. As regards lyric
productions, the setting of songs to music,
this principle may be sufficient,
but the case is different when both
words and music are controlled by a
dramatic action.
Another view places music in a class altogether by itself, apart
from
the other arts, and unable to unite with them except in so far as
to
employ them as its vehicle. Wherever music appears in company
with
poetry, music must take the lead, must be governed by its own
laws,
retain its own forms, while poetry, its compliant servant, must
avoid
all higher expression and accommodate itself as best it can to
the
music. So the highest form of music will be instrumental, where it
is
unfettered by the ties of poetry.
A little work published in the fifties by the Vienna critic, Dr.
E.
Hanslick, entitled _Vom musikalisch-Schönen_, discusses this
question
very fully. It attained great celebrity at the time of its
publication and is
still read. It is the best attempt that I have seen
to state theoretically
the case against Wagner in sober and reasoned
language, and though it
contains a few misunderstandings it is free
from offensive personalities and
well worthy of attention. The author
is a disciple of that school of German
aestheticians of which F. Th.
Vischer is the foremost representative.
According to Dr. Hanslick, music, being an art isolated from
objective
nature, can never be anything but music. Whatever it expresses
can
only be stated in terms of music; it can never present a
definite
human "feeling." The essence of music is movement, and it
can
represent certain dynamic ideas. Thus, although it can never
express
love, hope, longing, etc., since those feelings involve a
perception
(_Vorstellung_) or a concept (_Begriff_), things foreign to
its
nature, it can represent given ideas as strong, weak,
increasing,
diminishing, etc.--or as anything which is a function of
time,
movement, and proportion. It can also _by analogy_ suggest in
the
hearer the ideas of pleasing, soft, violent, elegant, and the
like.
Whatever is beyond this is symbolical. Movement and symbolism are
the
only means by which music can express anything. The notion that
music
can express a definite feeling was, the author declares,
universally
held by aestheticians at that time, and amongst those who held it
he
seems to include Wagner. By way of exposing its fallacy he quotes
the
air from Gluck's _Orpheus_:
[Music: J'ai per - du mon Eu - ri - di - ce-- rien n'é - ga - le mon
mal
- heur.]
It would be possible, he says, to substitute words of an
exactly
opposite meaning--
J'ai trouvé mon Euridice,
Rien n'égale mon bonheur--
without the music being affected in any way.
This being so,
he
continues, music can never unite with words to express any notion
at
all, and the only form artistically admissible is absolute
or
instrumental music. The pleasure which it imparts is the same as
that
which we derive from a kaleidoscope, except in so far as it
is
ennobled by the fact of its emanating from a human mind instead of
from
a machine. The union of music with words is a morganatic
marriage, in which
the words must suffer violence. With this the
author believes himself to have
demolished Wagner's canon that in the
musical drama the music is only a
means, the end being the drama.
Undoubtedly there is much truth in these observations. If for the
moment
we confine our attention to instrumental music it is undeniable
that a
musical melody in itself can never be anything but music.
Wagner himself has
insisted that music attains all the fulness of
which it is capable as
absolute or instrumental music, and as this
truth has been too often
forgotten by composers, we have nothing but
gratitude for an author who once
more strives to bring it into notice.
But it is only a one-sided truth, and
insufficient. By the same rigid
reasoning it might be contended that a human
face, being nothing but
modelling and colour, can never express anything but
functions of
lines and forms, and colours. Everything in nature as well as in
art
has for those who look below the surface a significance beyond
its
external features. Nor does it follow that music will always
remain
content with its own glorious isolation, that it will never seek
for
union with other arts, sacrificing indeed its pristine purity,
but
gaining mightily in warm human expression. Even in the heyday
of
absolute music, in the instrumental compositions of Sebastian Bach,
we
may notice this tendency, though here it is rather the dance
than
poetry with which it strives to ally itself; while in
Beethoven's
symphonies the yearning for human community and human fellowship
is
noticeable from the first, and in the final work it breaks its
bonds
and dissolves into song.
The primary error in Dr. Hanslick's argument is that it begins at
the
wrong end, and tacitly assumes that art can be controlled
by
theoretical speculations. An _a priori_ development of the theory
of
art out of supposed first principles must in the end lead to
contradictions
and absurdities, and every one must feel his conclusion
that the union of
music and words is illegitimate--a view which, among
other things, would
deprive us of Schubert's songs--to be an
absurdity. Had the inquiry commenced
with familiar instances from
existing works of art in which music is felt to
possess a very vivid
power of expression and then been carried backwards to
find what it
can express and what not, and what are the conditions of
its
expression, the results might have been valuable and we should
have
been spared a dissertation resting wholly upon confusion of
the
meaning of words. Here a definite meaning has been attached to
the
word "feeling" (_Gefühl_); it is understood as including such
feelings
as "hope," "love," "fear," etc. These, of course, music
cannot express.
Wagner himself insists that music can never express a
_definite_ feeling, and
even censures it as a "misunderstanding"
on the part of Beethoven that in his
later works he attempted to do
so.[32] The best word to denote what music can
express is that used by
Helmholtz--_Gemüthstimmung_--untranslatable into
English, but for
which we may use the term "emotional mood" as denoting
something
similar. It is a _tuning_ or a _tone_ of the mind, a _mood_ that
music
expresses, and from a word of such vague meaning there is no risk
of
false deductions being drawn.
[Footnote 32: Wagner, _Ges. Schr_., iii. 341; iv. 387.]
All our musical sense revolts against the dictum that music cannot
under
any circumstances express a general feeling. Take, for example,
Agatha's
outburst on seeing the approach of her lover Max in the
second act of _Der
Freischütz_:
[Music: All' mei - ne Pul - se schla-gen, und das Herz wallt un - ge
-
stüm, Süss ent - - zückt ent - ge - - - gen ihm,.... etc.]
Would it be possible to hear this passage and not feel the melody as
a
direct and most vivid expression of joy?--joy, that is, in the
abstract, but
not a definite joy at some given event--that is told by
the words and
scenery? Whatever share words and gesture may contribute
is as nothing
compared with that exultant and rapturous outburst of
melody. Wherever there
is any character-drawing in Italian opera,
it is in the music, not in the
words, as, for example, in the more
dramatic portions of Elvira's music in
_Don Giovanni_. The frequent
movement in octaves imparts a nobility and
dignity to her expression
which are altogether absent in the words.
The paraphrase of the words of the air from Gluck's _Orphée_ is
amusing
enough as a _jeu d' esprit_, but surely cannot be taken
seriously. Hanslick
seems to have misapprehended the music; it does
not express grief, and is not
intended to. The _words_ express
the desolation of Orpheus at the loss of his
beloved, but the
_Stimmung_ of the melody is one of calm resignation. It is
the
serene self-restraint with which Gluck loves to imbue his
classic
heroes and heroines, and which is equally appropriate to joy
and
grief. Grillparzer, whose authority both as a dramatist and as
a
sensitive lover of music is rightly esteemed very highly, has
declared
that it would be possible to take any one of Mozart's
_arias_,
and set words of quite different meaning to them. This may be true
of
many of Mozart's _arias_, which were often composed more with
regard to
the organ of a particular singer than to the text before
him, but is
assuredly not true of his great dramatic scenes and
finales.
Whatever value such speculations may possess vanishes before
the
unconscious instinct of the creating artist. It is well known
that
German dramatists and poets have from the beginning felt keenly
the
need of musical expression. If the need was less felt by
English
dramatists of our great period the reason is that it required
the
development of music in the hands of the great German masters
before
its power could be fully known. Herder, Schiller, Goethe,
Hoffmann,
Richter, and a host of others all sighed for the aid of
music.[33]
Kleist declared music to be the root of all the other arts.
Their
dream could not be realized until the right form of the drama
which
could unite with music had been found. It was at last found by
Wagner
after repeated trial and failure. He determined the form as that
in
which the characters act out of their own inner impulses.
The
historical drama shows men as torn hither and thither by
external
political considerations. The action is impelled by wheels
within
wheels of intrigue and complex psychological mechanism. For
such
subjects the romance, with its almost unlimited powers of
expatiation,
is the proper vehicle, but they are unfitted for music;
they
necessitate wearisome explanations of complicated motives
altogether
foreign to the direct emotional character of musical drama.
The
musical character is the one who is entirely himself, and
whose
motives are therefore clear from the first; such subjects are to
be
found above all in the mythologies of imaginative and poetically
gifted
peoples. That does not of course mean that other subjects are
excluded, for
there is no domain of life which may not offer the same
conditions, provided
only that the characters have a strong and
well-marked individuality. When
once this principle was discovered the
musical drama became a reality. Wagner
uses for this form of drama the
term _reinmenschlich_--purely human--an
expression which was in
keeping with the humanitarian views prevalent at the
time when he
wrote, but not free from objection and apt to be misunderstood
in our
day.
[Footnote 33: Many utterances of German poets to this effect will
be
found reproduced in Chamberlain's _Richard Wagner_.]
If the drama longed for the means of expressing its own inmost
nature,
no less did music seek for a nearer approach to objectivity and to
the
conditions of human existence. If it is true that music is the root
of
all the arts, then it must also be the root of human life, and
must
seek to reveal itself in life and in the drama which is the mirror
of
life. The desire for human expression is already, as we have seen,
very
clearly discernible in the symphonies and sonatas of Beethoven,
but it is
since his time that the most remarkable development has
taken place. The
programme music of Berlioz, Liszt, and other
composers has rightly been
condemned by many critics, but the mistake
was in the manner of the
composition rather than in the intention,
which was natural, indeed
inevitable. Wagner's assertion that with
Beethoven "the last symphony has
been written"--rationally understood,
of course, as meaning that nothing
beyond is possible on instrumental
lines--is quite true. There was nothing
left but for music to take
form in things of human interest. Only the
composers, perhaps as much
from want of an adequate dramatic form as from
want of skill, failed
to attain their end. While evidently striving to follow
out
Beethoven's hint, _mehr Ausdruck der Empfindung als Malerei_,
their
powers failed, and they produced more _Malerei_ than
_Empfindung_. The reader
may consider by the light of these
remarks the passage in Liszt's _Faust_
symphony in the slow
movement, where Gretchen is represented as plucking a
daisy,
repeating, "He loves me, he loves me not," etc. The composer
has
depicted the scene with wonderful skill and exquisite poetic
feeling,
but the essence of Goethe's scene, which lies entirely in
its
unconscious innocence, is gone in this highly wrought
artificial
presentation. It is the difference between nature and art, between
the
naïve, pure-minded maiden and the actress painted and decorated
for
the stage.
There are few persons, I believe, who on hearing an
instrumental
composition do not feel a desire to form a mental picture of
its
contents, so to speak, to objectivate it in their minds.
Aestheticians
tell us that we are wrong, and we are apt to laugh at each
other's
pictures, but we all do it. Beethoven, as we know from his
friend
Schindler and his pupil Ries, often, if not always, had some
object
before him when composing his instrumental works. The fact that
the
same music suggests different interpretations to different minds
will
not disturb us if we remember that music does not and never
can
_depict_ or _describe_ its object: for that we have the arts
of poetry
and painting. What music can give is the emotional mood
which it calls forth,
and which may be common to many objects very
different in their external
character. A "stormy" movement may be
referred to a storm of winds and waves,
or to a storm of human
passions, and so might suggest a battle, a shipwreck,
a revolution, a
violent emotion of love or hatred, or a play of Shakespeare.
But the
aversion which we naturally feel to the labelling of sonatas
and
symphonies with titles is in my opinion justifiable,[34] because
here
we recognize an attempt to stereotype one particular
interpretation,
instead of leaving the mind of each hearer free to form his
own.
[Footnote 34: The latest and most atrocious outrage on good taste
in
this respect is the labelling of Beethoven's great B flat sonata
as
"_the Hammerklavier_." All musicians of finer feeling should
unite to
kill this absurd name.]
A musical composition is a vessel into which many wines can be
poured.
It cannot in itself express either any material object or any
definite
feeling which involves such an object. No music can alone, without
a
suggestion from elsewhere, express a person, a place, or love or fear
or
a battle or "a calm sea and prosperous voyage," or any similar
thing. But it
has a marvellous power of receiving suggestions which
are offered to it, by
words or otherwise, of carrying them on and, by
means of its own forces of
movement and proportion, intensifying their
expression to, a degree
inconceivable without its aid. Mathematics
present an exact analogy to music,
and are to science what music is to
art. Both are ideal forms which in one
sense only attain complete
individuality when they are pure, but in another
sense have no meaning
until they are applied to some object of nature. A
mathematical
formula is only true so long as it remains an ideal in the mind;
but
its existence has no other purpose than to state a law for
material
phenomena, when it at once loses its essential qualities as
a
mathematical formula, certainty and accuracy. In this way we
may
understand simultaneously the supremacy of absolute music and
the
truth for which Wagner contends, that music can never be anything
but
expression.
Dr. Hanslick's dictum that music has no other means for its
expression
than movement and symbolism cannot be admitted. It can express
through
association. All the senses have in some degree the faculty
of
recalling in the mind impressions with which they have once
been
associated. Who has never had the memory of his home or of some
place
familiar to his childhood recalled by the scent of a flower or
a
plant? No sense possesses this power in anything like the same degree
as
that of hearing, especially when the connection has been
established through
a musical strain. It is on this principle that
Wagner mainly relies in his
dramatic musical motives. In itself the
connection is in the first instance
artificial. A musical strain of a
striking individual character is brought
into connection with some
idea of the drama, it may be a person or a scene or
an incident, in
short, anything which may serve as a dramatic motive,
and
thenceforward whenever the musical strain is heard, the idea
with
which it has been associated will be called up in the mind of
the
hearer. All the resources of modern music are then at the disposal
of
the composer for exhibiting his motive in the most varied
lights,
intensifying, varying, contrasting, or combining with other
motives,
as the dramatic situation requires.
It often happens that the musical strain is heard before its
association
with an idea of the drama has been established, as, for
example, in the
instrumental prelude. The idea then seems to hover in
the music as a vague
_presentiment_ (_Ahnung_) of something
that is to come. A superb example of
this occurs at the end of _Die
Walküre_. Wotan has laid his daughter to rest,
and surrounded her
with a barrier of fire. "Let none cross this fire who
dreads my
spear," he cries, and at once the threat is answered by a
defiant
blast from the trombones uttering a strain which has not yet
taken
definite form, but which we learn from the sequel is the theme
proper
to Siegfried the hero, who is destined to bring to an end the power
of
the god.
Or the motive may reappear after it has served its purpose on the
stage;
it is then a _reminiscence_ of past events. No finer
example of this could be
found than in the music of Isolde's
swan-song, the so-called _Liebestod_,
which is built up out of
the motives of the life into a symphonic structure
of almost
unparalleled force and truth.
Before beginning the detailed consideration of our work, I wish to
say
a few words on some features of the music.
As I am writing for
the
general reader and not for the musician, I shall endeavour to
express
myself in generally understood terms, and avoid technical
details.
Each of Wagner's works presents a distinct and strongly defined
musical
physiognomy marking it off from all the others. The music of
each is cast in
its own mould and is at once recognizable from that of
the rest. The most
characteristic features of the music of _Tristan
und Isolde_ are its
concentrated _intensity_ and the ineffable
_sweetness_ of its melody. The
number of musical-dramatic motives
employed is very small, but they are
insisted upon and emphasized by a
musical working out unparalleled in the
other works. In
_Rheingold_, for example, some twelve or fifteen motives--if
we
count only those of well-marked contours, and which are used
in
definite dramatic association--can be distinguished; whereas in
the
whole of _Tristan_ there are of such _Leitmotive_ in the
narrowest
sense not more than three or four. The treatment is also
very different. The
_Ring_ is not entirely innocent of what has
been wittily called the
"visiting-card" employment of motives, while
in _Tristan_ the musical motive
does not repeat, but rather
supplements, the words, indicating what these
have left untold, thus
entering as truly into the substance of the drama as
it does into that
of the music.
The most important motive of all, the one which pervades the drama from
beginning to end, is the love-motive.
Its fundamental form is that in which
it appears in the second bar of the "Prelude" -- in the oboe.
Variants
of it occur without the characteristic semitone suspension or with a
falling seventh.
The cello motive of the opening phrase of the Prelude
may also be considered as derived from the same by contrary movement.
Of equal importance, though occurring less frequently, and only
at
important and decisive moments, is the death-motive.
This motive
is
less varied than the last, recurring generally in the same key -- Ab
passing into Cm--and with similar instrumentation, the brass
and drums
entering _pp_ on the second chord.
Act II opens with a strongly marked phrase which is the
musical
counterpart of the great metaphor so conspicuous throughout
the act, of the
day as destructive of love.
The working out of this
motive whilst the lovers
are together is a marvel of musical
composition, and it always returns in the
same connection.
Perhaps we may also include among these fundamental
musical-dramatical
motives one occurring in the middle of the second act at
the words
"_Sehnen hin zur heilgen Nacht_".
It is akin to
the
death-motive proper, but the solemn harmonies are here torn
asunder
into a strain so discordant that without the dramatic context it
would
scarcely be bearable.
It is the rending of the bond with this life
and
with the day.
The music here reminds us that, however heroically
the
lovers accept their inevitable end, they feel that it means a
rough
and painful severance from that life which was once so dear
and
beautiful.
Other motives are reminiscences more or less of a purely musical
nature
or connected only in a general way with scenes or incidents of
the drama.
They call back indistinctly scenes of bygone times, and
will be spoken of as
they occur in the work.
The best preliminary study for Wagner's use of motives is that
of
Beethoven's sonatas and symphonies.
_Macmillan's Magazine_ for
July,
1876, contains a valuable article by . Dannreuther
which will be
useful as an introduction, and ought to be familiar to
all who are interested
in modern developments of music.
Dannreuther there treats of the type of
variation peculiar to
Beethoven, which he compares to the metamorphosis of
insects or of the
organs of plants: "It is not so much the alteration of a
given
thought, a change of dress or of decoration, it is an actual
creation
of something new and distinct from out of a given germ." He
then
proceeds to trace the principle in some of Beethoven's later
works,
and shows how for example the great B flat sonata (Op. 106) is
built
upon a scheme of rising tenths and falling thirds; the A flat
sonata
(Op. 110) upon two simple melodies. Wagner's procedure is similar;
he
takes a musical motive which has already been used and brings forth
out
of it something totally new, scarcely resembling its parent in
external
features, and yet recognizable as the same.
The problem before Wagner was how to render this new
acquisition
available for the drama, and we shall best understand him if we
look
upon him as all his life seeking its solution, each work
representing
an experimental stage rather than a perfectly finished model. In
the
earlier part of the _Ring_ he began with a purely
conventional
conjunction of a musical strain with a tangible and visible
object--a
ring, a giant, a goddess, etc. This is wrong method, and,
although
generally his instinctive sense of dramatic propriety kept him
from
going very far astray, the effects of his wrong procedure
are
occasionally visible. Why, for example, should a given melody
in
thirds on two bassoons denote a ring? and why should it bear a
thematic
kinship to another melody denoting Walhall? The association
is purely
conventional and serves no purpose, for the material object,
a ring, is fully
expressed in the word; there is nothing more to be
said about it than that it
is just a ring, and we do not want the
bassoons to repeat or confirm what is
quite intelligible without them.
In _Tristan_ this pitfall is mostly avoided,
but it is in _Die
Meistersinger_ and _Parsifal_ that we find the motives
most
skilfully employed.
A critical analysis of the harmonic structure of our work does not
fall
within the scope of this treatise. It will be found in text-books
specially
devoted to the subject. I can here only offer a few general
remarks.
Modern harmonies are made theoretically much more difficult than
they
need be by our system of notation, which grew up in the Middle
Ages.
The old modes knew no modulation in our sense, and in the
seventeenth
century, when the tempered system came into vogue, making every
kind
of modulation possible, the old notation was retained. How unsuited
it
is for modern music appears from the drastic contradictions which
it
involves.
It is quite a common thing to see the same
note
simultaneously written as F sharp in one part and as G flat
in
another. This is what makes modern harmony seem so much more
difficult
than it really is, for when the music comes to be _heard_,
these
formidable-looking intervals resolve themselves into something
quite
natural and generally not difficult of apprehension by a musical
ear.
Unfortunately we are compelled to learn music through the medium of
a
keyed instrument, generally through the most unmusical of
instruments,
the piano, and we learn theory largely through the eye and the
reason
instead of through the ear. The problems of harmony will seem
much
simpler if we remember that its basis is the _interval_--music
does
not know "notes" as such, but only intervals--that the number of
possible
intervals is very small and their relations quite simple, and
that everything
which is not reducible to a very simple vulgar
fraction is heard, not as a
harmony, but as a passing note, an
inflection of a note of a chord. In fact
the advance made in chord
combinations since the introduction of the tempered
system is not very
great. All, or nearly all, the chords used by Wagner are
to be found
in the works of Bach.
The suggestion to explain Wagner's
harmonies by
assuming a "chromatic scale" rests upon a misapprehension of
the
nature of a scale. Every scale implies a tonality, i.e. a tonic
note,
to which all the other notes bear some definite numerical
relation.
There cannot be a chromatic scale in the scientific sense in
music;
what we call by that name in a keyed instrument is merely a
diatonic
scale with the intervals filled in; it always belongs to a
definite
key, and the accidentals are only passing notes. It is in
passing
notes that we must seek the key to Wagner's harmonies. With
Wagner
more than with any other composer since Bach the parts must be
read
horizontally as well as vertically. As long as we look upon
harmonic
progressions as vertical columns of chords following one upon
the
other we may indeed explain, but we shall never understand them.
Each
chord must be viewed as the result of the confluence of all
the
separate voices moving harmoniously together. This, too, will help
us
to grasp the character of "altered" chords, so lavishly employed
by
Wagner, and of "inflection," by which term I mean to denote all
kinds
of passing notes, appoggiaturas, suspensions, changing notes, and
the
like. All are phenomena of harmonic notes striving
melodically
onwards, either upwards or downwards.
Although little has been done in the invention of new combinations,
the
character of the harmonic structure has changed considerably since
the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This is evident at
first glance on
comparing a score of Haydn or Mozart with one of
Wagner or Liszt. There,
although chromatic harmonies are not
unfrequent, they occur only
sporadically, the general structure being
diatonic, whereas with the later
masters the whole tissue is
chromatic; the score fairly bristles with
accidentals, and a simple
major or minor triad is the exception. Very
different too is the
periodic structure. The phrases no longer fall naturally
into
eight-bar periods interpunctuated with cadences, but are determined
by
the text, and although the eight-bar scheme is
generally
maintained--much disguised, it is true, but still recognizable--it
is
determined not by half-closes at the sections, but by the eight
beats
of the two-line metre, while the periods follow each other in
even
flow without any indication of cadence. In other words the
musical
form is governed by the declamation.
Theory of harmony is one thing, living music quite another.
The musical
hearer of a work like "Tristan und Isolde" will understand its harmonic
structure, though he know nothing of the theoretical progression of the
chords, provided the performance be
good, i.e. correct, just as a man
ignorant of grammar will understand a sentence which is clearly enunciated.
The composer needs no theory
of harmony.
His ear is his only guide, as the
eye of the artist is a
sufficient guide for his colouring without any theory
of colour.
There
is only one thing which the composer must keep before him
and which
the hearer must consciously be able to recognize--the Tonality.
The
problem of harmony therefore in practice reduces itself to that
of
modulation. To recognize the tonality quickly and certainly, look
for
the cadences. They are as it were landmarks, placed along the
melodic
road, indicating from time to time where we are.
I cannot dismiss the subject of harmony without mentioning the
chord
which from its employment at decisive moments and its
extraordinary
mystic expressiveness has been called the soul of the
_Tristan_
music. Its direct form is the chord as it occurs in the beginning of the Prelude.
The instrumentation of _Tristan_ does not present any special
features
different from that of Wagner's other works.
It is less
heavily scored than
the _Ring_, and at the same time the
instrumentation is more concentrated.
Wagner usually employs his wind
in groups of at least three in each
colour--e.g. three flutes, two
oboi and one English horn, two clarinets and a
bass clarinet,
etc.--and so is able to keep his colours pure. It is partly to
this
that the extraordinary purity of his tone in the tutti is due,
partly
also to the sonority imparted to the brass by means of the bass
tuba,
and still more to the consummate skill of the composer in
the
distribution of his parts.
There is an interesting note at the beginning of the score in which
the
composer seems to be trying to excuse himself for using valve
instruments in
the horns.
While admitting the degradation of tone and
loss of the power of
soft binding resulting from the use of valves, he
thinks that the innovation
(which I need scarcely observe is not his)
is justified by the advantage
gained in greater freedom of movement.
In such matters one must be allowed to
form one's own judgment, and
though it may seem like trying to teach a fish
to swim, a humble
amateur may be permitted to wish that Wagner had here
resisted the
tide of progress. It is not only that the tone and power of
binding
are injured, but the whole character of horns and trumpets is
altered
when they are expected to sing chromatic passages like the violin
and
the clarinet. As the point is of some interest, I should like to
bring
it before the reader with some examples. The essential character
of
the horns is nowhere more truly conveyed than in the soft passage
near
the beginning of the overture to _Der Freischütz_, and it is
the
contrast between the two nature scales on the C horn and the F
horn
which gives the character to this lovely idyll. The trumpets
are
capable of even less variety of expression than the horns, as
their
individuality is even more strongly marked. How entirely
that
character is conditioned by the mechanism of the instrument may
be
illustrated by an example. The third movement of Beethoven's
seventh
symphony contains an interlude _molto meno mosso_. The
choral
theme is accompanied by a continuous A, sustained in octave in
the
violins, which in the intervals between the verses descends to G
sharp
and returns.
The repeat at the end enters _ff._ after a strong crescendo, and
at this
point the sustained A is taken over from the violins by the
trumpets and
given forth with piercing distinctness above the tutti of
the orchestra, the
effect being one of extraordinary brilliancy. Now
comes the point with which
we are concerned. In the intervals the
trumpet cannot descend to G sharp,
because it has not got the note in
its natural scale, and is therefore
obliged to repeat.
Indisputably the composer would have written G sharp had the
trumpet
been able to play it; it was only the defective scale of
the
instrument which led him to write A, but the effect of hearing A
when
we expect G sharp is electrifying; the unbending rigidity of
the
trumpet is here expressed with a vividness and force which
nothing
else could have given.
Many more examples might be brought from the works of the
great
composers to show how the horns and trumpets have lost in
expressive
power by having adopted the chromatic scale of other
instruments.
Wagner's use of the brass generally is most skilful; he is
especially
happy in avoiding the blatancy and coarseness which soils the
scores
of some composers. Neither trumpets nor drums are much
used
continuously in the score of _Tristan_. The former are often
employed
in the lower part of their scale and only for particular
effects. Trombones
generally utter single chords, or slow successions
of chords, adding
solemnity to the sound, and crowning a climax. A
favourite instrument with
Wagner is the harp, and he uses it freely in
_Tristan_. The effect is, as it
were, to place the orchestra upon
springs, adding lightness and elasticity to
the tone, as may be
noticed in the accompaniment to the duet at the end of
the first act.
We often hear Wagner's melody described as if it were not melody in
the
ordinary meaning of the word, but a kind of "recitative" or
"declamation."
The great French singer, Madame Viardot Garcia, was
asked on one occasion in
a private circle to sing the part of Isolde.
She took the score and sang it
_a prima vista_ to Klindworth's
accompaniment.
On being told that in Germany
singers could not be
found to undertake the part, alleging that it was too
difficult and
unmelodious, she naïvely asked whether German singers were
not
musical!
Assuredly any person to whom Wagner's music, especially
that
of "Tristan", appears unmelodious is unmusical, or at least
defective
in the sense for melody.
Wagner's music is easy to sing.
Much easier, for
example, than that of Mozart.
This, however, is only true for singers who are
highly musical.
The great majority have not
had any real musical education,
and it is to these that the common
notion that Wagner's music is unsingable,
that it ruins the voice, is
due.
The notion that recitative and melody are
things opposed to one
another is itself a misunderstanding. The
characteristic mark of
recitative in the narrow sense is that it is not bound
by rhythmic
forms, and therefore has a somewhat dry, matter-of-fact
character,
which would become tedious if it continued unrelieved--as life
would
be dull without any sweets. Wagner says: "My melody is
declamation,
and my declamation melody."
There is no line of demarcation;
they are
as inseparably united as emotion and intellect. But although
the
stream of emotion in human life is continuous, it is not
continually
at the same tension. Moments of high exaltation alternate with
more
subdued intervals, and a very large part of the mechanical routine
of
life is emotionally almost quiescent. In the drama the
emotional
element alternates with the narrative, and according as the one or
the
other predominates, the weight of the expression is in the music
or
the words; each therefore rises and falls in alternation. Even
in
Shakespeare's spoken drama traces of this ebb and flow may be
noticed,
the language becoming more musical under the stress of higher
emotion.
In the opera the intervals between the lyric _arias_, etc.,
had
to be filled in with dry explanation or narrative, and there arose
the
_recitative secco_, a rapid recitation in which the melody is
reduced
to a mere shadow. The German language was unfitted for dry
recitative of this
type, and these filling-in parts had therefore to
be spoken--a device which
proved intolerable, since it destroyed the
illusion of the music. Wagner, as
we saw, got over the difficulty by
choosing a form of drama in which the
emotional element was supreme,
and the narrative filling in reduced to a
minimum. We further saw how
in _Tristan und Isolde_ the principle is driven
to such an
exaggerated extreme as sometimes to render the action
almost
unintelligible. Nowhere is the music unmelodious or uninteresting,
but
it is elastic and pliable and changes its character with the
emotional
intensity of the dramatic situation, being more subdued in parts
of
the first act, asserting itself whenever rage, irony, tenderness,
or
other emotion call for expression; omnipotent in the great
love-duet,
culminating in the nocturne, and once more soaring in highest
ecstasy
in Isolde's dissolution, with endless gradations in the
portions
between. Hearers who are not accustomed to the dramatic expression
of
music attend only to those moments of intense lyric expression, just
as
in the opera they attend only to the _arias_; all else appears
to them
uninteresting and unmelodious. This is to miss the essential
thing in
Wagner's works--the drama itself; but it is precisely what is
done by those
hearers who are incapable of the effort of following
attentively the dramatic
development.
CHAPTER XI
OBSERVATIONS ON THE TEXT AND MUSIC
It remains for us now to examine the work itself, scene by scene,
that
we may see how the principles of art which we have been considering
in
the preceding chapters are illustrated. The following notes are
written
with a practical end; they are intended to assist those who
are unacquainted
with the work and are about to hear it for the first
time to follow the
composer's intentions. They do not profess to give
a full commentary or
explanation, but only to start the reader on the
right path that he may find
the way for himself. Those who read German
should begin by thoroughly
mastering the text. Tristan is not like a
modern problem play to be
understood at once from the stage, without
any effort. There are many, I
regret to say, who spare themselves even
this trouble, but it is
indispensable, for even if singers always
enunciated their words more
distinctly than they do, it would be quite
impossible to follow the difficult
text on first hearing. Beyond this,
however, very little preparation is
necessary; especially the study of
lists of _Leitmotive_ should be avoided,
since they give a
totally wrong conception of the music. We cannot study an
edifice by
looking at the bricks of which it is built. Lectures with
musical
illustrations, provided they are really well done, by a
competent
pianist, are valuable, and it is also of use to study selected
scenes
at the piano with text and music, the scene on the stage being
always
kept before the mind, and the voice part being sung as far
as
possible. For those who are quick of musical apprehension such
studies
are not necessary, but the careful reading of the text
is
indispensable for all. In all studies at the piano the arrangement
of
Hans von Bülow should be used, even by those who are unable to
master
all its difficulties, since the simplified arrangements are
very
imperfect. As a help to those who study the text at home, I
have
recounted the general course of the action and dialogue just
in
sufficient outline to enable the reader to follow what is going
on,
adding here and there a literal translation, where it
seemed
desirable, especially where the meaning of the original is
difficult
to grasp.
Some introductory matter must first be told.
Marco, King of
Cornwall, has lately been involved in a war with the King of Ireland,
whose
general, Moroldo, has invaded the country to compel tribute.
Tristano, King Marco's nephew, has defeated the army and killed Moroldo,
but
himself been wounded in the fight. A piece of Tristano's sword remained in Moroldo's skull.
Tristan's wound refusing to heal (cfr. Parsifal).
Tristan
has sought the advice of the renowned Irish princess and
medicine-woman,
Isolde.
She had been the betrothed bride of Moroldo -- ain't this a small world? -- and in
his head,
sent back to Ireland in derision, as "tribute," by the conqueror,
she
has found a splinter from the sword which slew him, and has kept
it.
While Tristan is lying sick under her care she notices a gap in
his
Tristan's sword -- phallic? -- into which the splinter fits, and she knows that he is
the
slayer of her lover.
ISOTTA approaches him with sword upraised to
slay
him.
TRISTANO looks up at her; their eyes meet; she lets the sword fall,
and
bids him begone and trouble her no more.
Tristan returns to
Cornwall cured.
His uncle is childless, and wishes to leave the kingdom
to Tristan when he dies -- why not to the National Trust?
But there are cabals in the state.
A party
has been formed, under Tristan's friend Meloto, to induce King Marco
to
marry and beget a direct heir to the throne.
Tristano joins them,
and with great difficulty persuades his uncle MARCO to despatch him to
Ireland
to bring the Princess Isolde to be Marco's wife.
The curtain
rises when they are on board the ship on the voyage to Cornwall,
just
approaching the land.
The Prelude is a condensed picture of the entire drama.
As
an instrumental piece it is unable to render the definite actions.
But
it
can give with great distinctness a tone or an atmosphere out of
which
these acts will shape themselves in the sequel, a presentiment of
what
is to be.
The subject of our work is Love trying to raise itself
out
of the contamination of human life into a higher and purer sphere,
but
failing so long as it is clogged with the conditions of
bodily
existence.
The text of the Prelude may be taken from the words
of
Tristan in the third act:
"Sehnen! Sehnen! Im Sterben mich zu sehnen, Vor Sehnsucht nicht
zu sterben."
This theme is enunciated with almost realistic eloquence in the
very
first phrase, in the two contrasting strains, the love-motive
striving
upwards in the oboe (DESIRE), and its variant fading downwards in the
cello (GRIEF).
The union of the two produces a harmony of
extraordinary expressiveness, which I have already referred to in the last
chapter as the soul of the Tristan music.
Every hearer must be
struck with its mysterious beauty, and it has been the subject of
many
theoretical discussions.
It is best understood as the chord on
the second degree of the scale of A minor, with inflections:
G sharp being a suspension or appoggiatura resolved upwards on to
A while the D# (more properly Eb) is explained by the melody
of the violoncelli, which, instead of moving at once to D, pass through
a step of a semitone.
There is, however, one thing to be noticed in
this melody.
The dissonant Eb is NOT resolved in its
own instrument, the violoncelli, but is taken up by the English horn,
and by it resolved in the next bar.
This instrument therefore has
a distinct melody of its own, consisting only of two notes, but
still
heard as a kind of "sigh", and quite different from the
merely filling-in part of the clarinets and bassoons.
There are really THREE
melodies combined:
-- Oboi
-- celli
-- Eng. Horn
It will not be necessary for us to anatomize any more chords in
this way.
I did so in this case in order to show the intimate
connection between the harmony and the melody, and how the explanation of
the harmonies must be sought through the melodies by which they
are
brought about.
The entire Prelude is made up of various forms of the love-motive.
The key is Am, to which it pretty closely adheres, the
transient modulations into a'+, c'+, etc., only serving to enforce
the feeling of tonality.
The reason for this close adherence to one key
is not far to seek.
Wagner never modulates without a reason.
The
Prelude presents ONE SIMPLE FEELING, and there is no cause for or
possibility
of modulation.
At the 78th bar the music begins to modulate,
and
seems tending to the distant key of Ebm, the love-motive
is
taken up forte and più forte by the trumpets, but in bar
84 the
modulation abruptly comes to an end, the soaring violins fall
to the earth.
The piece ends as it began, with a reminiscence of the first part in Am
.
An expressive recitative of the violoncelli and basses then leads to Cm, the key to Act I, Scene I.
See the remarks on modulation at the end of his
essay
_Ueber die Anwendung der Musik auf das Drama, Ges. Schr._ x. pp.
248
seq., where he gives the advice to young students of composition:
"Never
leave a key so long as you can say what you have to say in
it."]
******************************************************
ATTO I
*********************************************************
SCENA I.
The scene opens in a pavilion on the deck of the ship.
ISOTTA is reclining on a couch, her face buried in the pillows.
Brangania's
listless attitude as she gazes across the water, the young sailor's ditty to
his Irish girl as he keeps watch on the mast, reflect the calmness of the sea
as the ship glides before the westerly
breeze, and contrast with the tempest
raging in Isolde's breast.
Suddenly ISOTTA starts up in alarm, but Brangania
tries to soothe her, and
tells her, to the soft undulating accompaniment of
two bassoons in
thirds, how she already sees the loom of the land, and that
they will
reach it by the evening.
At present BRANGANIA has no suspicion
of anything disturbing ISOTTA, whose feelings are indicated by
an agitated passage in the strings.
ISOTTA starts from her
reverie.
"What land?" she asks.
"Cornwall? Never."
Then follows a
terrific outburst:
Degenerate race, unworthy of your fathers!
Whither, oh mother,
hast thou bestowed the might over the sea and the storm?
Oh, tame art of
the sorceress, brewing balsam-drinks only!
Awake once more, bold
power!
Arise from the bosom in which thou hast hidden thyself!
Hear my
will, ye doubting
winds: Hither to battle and din of the tempest, to
the raging whirl of the roaring storm! Drive the
sleep from this dreaming
sea; awake angry greed
from its depths; show it the prey which I offer;
let
it shatter this haughty ship, gorge itself upon the
shivered
fragments! What lives thereon, the breathing
life, I give to you winds as
your guerdon.
Both the words and the music of this wonderful invocation are worthy of
attention.
Especially the words with their drastic
alliteration may be commended to those who still doubt
Wagner's powers as a
poet.
The music is mostly taken from the sailor's song, but quite
changed in character.
The rapid staccato movement with the strongly marked
figure of the bass have transformed
the peaceful ditty into a dance of
furies.
The entry of the trombones at the words
"Heran zu Kampfe"
is
characteristic of Wagner's employment of the brass throughout the work.
Their
slow swelling chords add volume and solemnity to the orchestral tone.
They
continue for a few bars only, and the voice distantly hints at the
love-motive
--
"zu tobender Stürme wüthendem Wirbel"
-- but for a moment
only.
It goes no further.
The terrified Brangäne tries to calm ISOTTA, and at the same time to
learn
what is the cause of her anger.
She recalls Isolde's strange and cold
behaviour on parting from her parents in Ireland, and on the
voyage; why is
she thus?
A peculiar imploring tenderness is imparted to her appeal at the
end by the falling sevenths, an interval which we have already met with in
the "Preludio" and which is characteristic of
this act.
Her efforts are vain.
Isolde starts up hastily crying
"Air! air!
throw
open the curtains!"
*****************************************************
SCENA II.
The curtain thrown back discloses the deck of the ship
with the crew grouped around Tristan, who is steering, his man
Kurwenal reclining near him.
The refrain of the sailors' song is again
heard.
Isolde's eyes are fixed upon Tristan as she begins to the strain
of the love-motive accompanied by muted strings:
Chosen for me!--lost to me!
Death-devoted head! Death-devoted heart!
enunciating with these words the death-motive.
A curious mistake in the stage-management may be
noticed.
The scene is obviously laid in the forecastle; one glance at
the stage is
enough to show this, and the sails are set that way.
Nor can it be altered,
for it would never do to have them looking among
the audience for the land
ahead.
So that Tristan's ship has her rudder in the bow!
Rarely is Wagner at
fault in trifles of this kind.
In all other respects the deck-scene is
admirably truthful.
The sailors hauling, the song in the rigging, the obvious
time of day--in the "dogwatches"--are little touches of realism which will be
appreciated by all who know board-ship life.
ISOTTA turns to Brangäne, and with a look of the utmost scorn,
indicating
Tristan, she asks:
"What thinkst thou of the slave?"
"Him there who shirks my gaze,
and
looks on the ground in shame and fear?"
ISOTTA here strikes the tone which she maintains throughout the
act until all is changed by the philtre.
Never has such blighting
sarcasm before been represented in the drama as that which ISOTTA pours
out upon Tristan.
She is by far the stronger character of the two.
Her rage is volcanic, and uses here its most effective weapon.
Tristan writhes under her taunts, but cannot escape.
The music
unites inseparably with the words.
Even the rime adds its point as in
mockery she continues Brangäne's praise of the hero:
_Br_.
Dost thou ask of Tristan, beloved lady?
the wonder of all
lands, the much-belauded man, the hero without rival, the guard and ban of
glory?
ISOTTA (interrupting and repeating the phrase in mockery_).
who
shrinking from the battle takes refuge where he can
because he has gained
a corpse as bride for his master!
She commands Brangäne to go to Tristano and deliver a message.
BRANGANIA is to
remind TRISTANO that he has not yet attended upon her as his duty
requires.
_Br_:
Shall I request him to wait upon you?
_Is. [Tell him that] I, Isolde, _command my presumptuous servant fear for his mistress.
While Brangäne is making her way through the sailors to where Tristan is
standing at the helm, an interlude made of the sailors' song phrase is played
on four horns and two bassoons over a pedal bass, the strings coming in in
strongly marked rhythm on the last beat of each bar, marking the hauling of
the ropes to clear the anchor.
Tristan is in a reverie, scarcely conscious of
what is going on around him.
The love-motive once in the oboe shows how his
thoughts are occupied.
He starts at the word "Isotta", but collects himself,
and tries to conceal his evident distress under a manner of supercilious
indifference.
Brangäne becomes more urgent.
He pleads his inability to come
now because he cannot leave the helm.
Then Brangäne delivers
Isolde's message in the same peremptory words in which she has received
it.
Kurwenal suddenly starts up and, with or without permission, sends _his_
answer to Isolde.
Tristan, he says, is no servant of hers, for he is giving
her the crown of Cornwall and the heritage of
England.
"Let her mark that,
though it anger a thousand Mistress Isoldes."
Brangäne hurriedly withdraws to
the pavilion.
KURWENAL sings an insulting song after her in derision of Morold and
his expedition for
tribute:
His head now hangs in Ireland,
as tribute sent from
England!
As she closes the curtains, the sailors are heard outside singing
the refrain of his song, which is a masterpiece of popular music.
One
can imagine it to be the national song of the Cornishmen after
the expedition.
With regard to its very remarkable instrumentation, the augmented chord at the words
"auf oe
dem mere"
the humorous middle part of the horns, the unison of
the
trombones which, with the sharp entry of the violas, effect
the
modulation from B flat to D major, impart the most living colour
to
each moment.
*********************************************************
SCENE III.--
The interior of the pavilion, the curtains closed._)
Isolde has heard the interview, and makes Brangäne repeat
everything as it
happened.
Inexpressibly pathetic is the turn which
she gives to the words of
the song as she repeats the phrase of
Brangäne:
ISOTTA. (_bitterly_).
How should he safely steer the ship
to King
Marco's land...." (_with sudden emphasis,
quickly_) to hand him the
_tribute_ which he brings from
Ireland!
--the last sentence being to the refrain of the song.
Upward scale passages of the violins are suggestive of a sudden
impulse,
and there now begins (K.A. 25'1) a movement of great musical
interest in
which Isolde tells Brangäne of Tristan's previous visit to
her as "Tantris,"
recounting how she discovered him by the splinter of
the sword, the words:
"
Er sah mir in die Augen"
bringing the characteristic form of the
love-motive with the falling seventh
(1_b_).
Brangäne cries out in
astonishment at her own blindness.
Isolde continues to relate "how a hero
keeps his oaths":
Tantris
returned as Tristan to carry her off for
Cornwall's weary king
When Morold lived, who would have dared to offer us such an
insult?
Woe, woe to me!
Unwitting
I brought all this shame on myself.
Instead of
wielding the avenging sword, helpless I let it fall, and
now I serve my vassal!
Again rage overcomes her at the thought of Tristan's treachery.
Her inflamed imagination conjures up his report of her to King Marke:
That were a prize indeed, my lord and uncle! how seems she to
thee as a bride?
The dainty Irish maid I'll bring.
I know the ways and
paths.
One sign from thee to Ireland I'll fly
Isolde, she is yours!
The adventure delights me!
Curse on the infamous villain!
Curse on thy
head! Vengeance! Death!
Death to us both!
ISOTTA subsides exhausted amidst a stormy "tutti" of the orchestra with
the
trombones _ff_.
_Br_. (_with impetuous tenderness_).
Oh, sweet, dear,
beloved,
gracious, golden mistress! darling Isolde!
hear me! come, rest thee here
BR
gently draws ISOTTA to the couch_).
The music presents no special difficulties in this scene.
It is
so
complete in itself that, as has been truly remarked, it might well
be
performed as an instrumental piece without the voice.
It would
be
impossible to follow here the endless subtleties of the working
out,
nor is it necessary, since they will reveal themselves to
every
musical hearer who is familiar with the methods of Beethoven.
The
whole movement is in Em, and is built on a motive which has
grown
out of the love-motive by contrary movement, with a
characteristic
triplet accompaniment.
Throughout it follows the expression of
the
words closely, using the previous motives, and is a model of
Wagner's
musical style in the more lyric portions.
Wagner has remarked in
one
of his essays how Beethoven will sometimes break up his motives
and,
taking one fragment, often consisting of not more than two
notes,
develop it into something entirely new.
The following scene is
built
on motives developed out of the last two notes of the
love-motive,
either with or without the falling seventh.
It must here be noted how entirely Brangäne misunderstands
the situation.
Wagner has intentionally represented her as a
complete contrast to Isolde, as one of those soft, pliable natures who
are capable of the most tender self-sacrificing devotion, but are
utterly
wanting in judgment.
Woman-like, she thinks that it is only a
passing storm which she can lull with caressing words.
Her scarcely
veiled suggestion that, though Isolde may marry King Marke, she need
not
cease to love Tristan, shows the enormous gulf which separates
her
from her terrible mistress.
She suggests administering the love
philter which ISOTTA's mother has prepared for Marco to Tristano.
The music,
in which, so long as Brangäne is speaking, gaiety and tenderness
are mingled, is permeated with the love-motive.
Isolde thinks of
her mother's spells with very different feelings.
The music becomes
more
gloomy, and with the words,
"Vengeance for treachery--rest for
my
heart in its need," the death-motive, with its solemn
trombone-chords,
betrays the thought in her mind.
She orders Brangäne to
bring the casket.
Brangäne obeys, and innocently recounts all the
wonderful remedies which it contains:
_Br_.
For woe and wounds is balsam.
For evil poisons antidotes.
The
best of all I hold it here
She holds up the love-potion.
_Is_. Thou errst. I know it better
(_seizing the black
bottle
containing the death-drink and holding it aloft_).
This is the drink I
need.
A motive already heard in the Prelude (bassoons and
bass clarinet) now becomes very prominent in the brass.
The falling seventh here carries an air of profound gloom appropriate
to
the deadly purpose of Isolde.
At this moment a diversion occurs outside.
The ship is nearing the port,
and the crew are heard taking in the sails preparatory to
anchoring.
Kurwenal
enters abruptly.
********************************************
SCENE IV
We have already remarked how happily Wagner has contrived
to hit off the character of the board-ship life.
Here it is the
clatter
and bustle of coming into port that is represented; people
hurrying
about the deck, the young sailors' motive joyously ringing from
the
violins and wood, sailors hauling, and the colours fluttering in
the
breeze (semiquaver motives in clarinets and bassoons), all
are
preparing for the shore. Kurwenal enters and roughly orders
the
"women" to get themselves ready to land. Isolde is to prepare
herself
at once to appear before King Marke escorted by Tristan.
Isolde,
startled at first by Kurwenal's insolence, collects herself
and
replies with dignity:
Take my greetings to Sir Tristan and deliver him my message. If I am
to
go at his side to stand before King Marke, I cannot do so with
propriety
unless I first receive expiation for guilt yet unatoned.
Therefore, let him
seek my grace. (_On Kurwenal making an impatient
gesture, she continues with
more emphasis._) Mark me well and
deliver it rightly: I will not prepare to
land with him; I will not
walk at his side to stand before King Marke unless
he first ask of me
in due form to forgive and forget his yet unatoned guilt.
This grace I
offer him.
Kurwenal, completely subdued, promises to deliver her message
and retires.
The orchestral accompaniment during Isolde's speech has a very
solemn
character imparted to it by slow chords of the trombones,
_piano_,
with somewhat feverish semiquaver triplets on the
strings, snatches of the
love-motive and other motives being heard in
the wood-wind; while in the
pauses, runs on the violins mark
Kurwenal's impatience. The death-motive will
be noted at the words
"_für ungesühnte Schuld_."
***************************************************
SCENE V.
This is a scene of great pathos. Like Elektra[38] when
she
recognizes Orestes, so Isolde, when left alone with the only
friend
who is true to her, throws aside all her haughty manner, forgets
her
wild thirst for revenge, and for a moment gives way to all
the
tenderness which is hidden under that fierce exterior. Death is
just
before her; she throws herself into Brangäne's arms, and delivers
her
last messages to the world. The unhappy girl, still quite in the
dark
as to her mistress's intentions, only vaguely feeling the presage
of
some impending calamity, is told to bring the casket and take out
the
death-potion, Isolde significantly repeating the words in the
previous
scene. Brangäne, almost out of her senses, obeys instinctively, and
in
the midst of her entreaties Kurwenal throws back the curtain
and
announces Sir Tristan.
*****************************************
SCENE VI.
My purpose in these notes is to explain what may at
first
seem difficult; it is no part of my plan to expound the obvious.
The
following scene, where for the first time the two principal
personages
stand face to face, though the most important that we have met
with so
far, is perfectly clear, both in the music and the words. No one
could
mistake the force of the blasts of the wind instruments with which
it
opens (No. 8). The device of repeating a motive in rising thirds
was
adopted by Wagner from Liszt, and is very common in _Tristan_.
We
first met with it in the opening bars of the Prelude, where
the
love-motive is so repeated.
The first part of the scene is a trial of wits between Isolde
and
Tristan, in which the latter is helpless as a bird in the claws of
a
cat. The dialogue as such is a masterpiece, unrivalled in the works
of
any dramatic poet except Shakespeare. At last, crushed by her
taunts,
Tristan hands her his sword, asking her to pierce him through, only
to
be answered with scorn still more scathing than before. "No," she
says.
"What would King Marke say were I to slay _his best
servant_?" There is not a
trace of love in the scene; nothing but
anger and contempt. In other parts of
the act there are indications of
smouldering fire which threatens to break
out upon occasion, but there
is nothing of the kind when they are together.
If once, when he lay
helpless and in her power, she was touched with pity for
so noble a
hero, that has long ago been overcome, or only remains as a
distant
memory of something long past and gone. It has been truly
observed
that Tristan and Isolde are not like Romeo and Juliet, two
children
scarcely conscious of what they are doing. Both are in the
full
maturity of life and in the vigour of their intellectual powers.
In keeping with the dialectic, argumentative character of the
dialogue,
the music is generally dry and formal, but broken through
occasionally with
rending cries of agony, and interpolated with
moments of tender emotional
beauty. The orchestra generally gives the
tone to the situation, only
occasionally departing from that rôle to
enter at critical moments to support
and enforce specific words or
actions. The leading motive throughout is the
one which I have quoted:
"vengeance for Morold."
After some preliminary _persiflage_, in which she laughs to scorn
the
excuse which he offers for having kept away from her from a sense
of
propriety, she at once comes to the point:
_Is_. There is blood-feud between us!
TRISTANO: That was expiated.
_Is_. Not between us!
TRISTANO:
In open field before all the host a solemn peace was
sworn.
_Is_. Not there it was that I concealed Tantris, that
Tristan fell
before me. There he stood noble and
strong; but I swore not what he swore;
I had
learned to be silent. When he lay sick in the silent
room
speechless I stood before him with the sword.
My lips were silent, my hand
I restrained, but the vow
passed by my hand and my lips, I silently swore
to
keep. Now I will perform my oath.
TRISTANO:
What didst thou vow, oh woman?
_Is_. Vengeance for Morold.
TRISTANO:
Is that what is troubling you?
Once, and once only, does the victim turn to retort upon her with
her
own weapon of irony. The attempt is disastrous. At once changing
her
tone she assumes the air of an injured woman. Tristan has taken
her
lover from her, and does he now dare to mock her? As her
thoughts
wander back to past days of happiness she continues in strains
of
surpassing tenderness, mingled with hints of warlike music in
the
trumpets:
_Is_.
Betrothed MORTOLDO was to me, the proud Irish hero.
His arms I had
hallowed.
For me he went to battle.
When he fell, my honour fell.
In the
heaviness of my heart I swore that if no man would avenge the murder, I, a maiden, would take it upon me.
Sick and weary in my power, why did I
not then smite thee?
She states the reason why she did not slay him when he was in her power
in language so strange that I can only give a literal translation:
"I nursed the wounded man that, when restored to health, the man who
won him from Isolde should
smite him in vengeance."
Such is the German; what it means I must confess myself unable
to explain, and can only suspect some corruption in the text.
There is a solemn pause in the music.
The love or desire motive is uttered by the
bass clarinet.
Nothing is left for the vanquished and humbled TRISTANO but to
offer ISOTTA what atonement he can.
He hands her his sword, bidding her this
time wield it surely and not let it fall from her
hand.
But she has not yet
finished with him:
ISOTTA:
How badly I should serve thy lord!
What would King Marco say
if I were to slay his best servant who has preserved for him crown and
realm?
Keep thy sword.
I swung it once when vengeance was rife in
my bosom, while thy measuring glance was stealing my image to know whether
I should be a fit bride for King Marco.
I let the sword fall.
Now let
us drink atonement.
The motive of the drink of DEATH is here heard in trombones and tuba.
It
recurs constantly in the following portion.
She then signs to Brangäne to bring the drink.
The noise of the sailors
furling the sails outside becomes louder.
TRISTANO (starting from a reverie). Where are we?
ISOTTA: CLOSE TO THE PORT! (_death-motive_).
Tristan, shall I have
atonement?
What hast thou to answer?
TRISTANO (darkly):
The mistress of silence commands me silence.
I
grasp what she conceals [her love for me], and am silent upon what she cannot grasp [that honour forbids TRISTANO from declaring his love for her -- cfr. GUINEVERE and LANCELOT].
Another dark saying, of which, however, we fortunately have
the explanation from Wagner himself.
"What she conceals" is her love
for Tristan; "what she cannot grasp" is that his honour forbids him
from declaring his love for her.
Even now, on the brink of dissolution, while actually holding the
cup which is to launch them both into eternity, Isolde cannot bridle
her sarcasm:
ISOTTA:
We have reached the goal.
Soon we shall stand ... (_with light
scorn_) before King Marke! (_death-motive_).
With dreadful irony she repeats the words with which she
supposes Tristan will introduce her:
"My lord and uncle! look now at her!
A softer
wife thou ne'er
could'st find.
I slew her lover and sent her his head.
My wound the kindly
maid has healed.
My life was in her power.
But the gentle maiden gave it to me.
Her country's shame and dishonour--that she gave as well; all
that she might become thy
wedded bride.
Such thanks for kindly deeds I
earned by a sweet draught of atonement offered to me by
her favour in
expiation of my guilt.
Sailors_ (outside): Stand by the cable! Let go the anchor!
TRISTANO (starting wildly).
Let go the anchor! Veer her
round to the
tide! (_he tears the cup from Isolde's hand_).
Well know I Ireland's queen,
and the wondrous might
of her arts.
I took the balsam she once gave to
me.
Now I take the cup that quite I may recover.
Mark
well the oath of
peace in which I say my thanks:
To Tristan's honour--highest faith
To Tristan's woe--bold
defiance!
Delusion of the heart; dream of presage; sole
comfort of eternal
sorrow; kind drink of forgetfulness
I drink thee without flinching.
TRISTANO
puts the cup to his lips and drinks.
ISOTTA (tearing the cup from him_).
Treachery again.
Half is mine!
Traitor, I drink to thee!
She drinks and dashes the cup to the
earth_).
Instead of falling dead, the lovers stand transfixed gazing at
each other.
Brangäne has changed the drinks, and they have drunk
the draught of love for that of death.
Wagner sometimes expects
his artists to possess powers beyond those which are allotted to man.
The actors have here to express, by gesture, the change of feeling
which gradually comes over them.
They start, tremble, the love-motive
steals into and at last dominates the orchestra, and they fly into
one another's arms.
The increasing commotion outside and the cheers of the men indicate that
King Marke has put out from the shore and is nearing the ship.
An
aside of
Brangäne at this moment is not without significance.
She has
been sitting
apart in suspense and confusion.
Now, as she begins to
realize the
consequences of what she has done, she gives way to
despair.
How much better
would a short death have been than the
prospect of the life that is now
before them!
The fact of her courage giving way so soon shows that she was
only acting under a momentary
impulse.
Little more need be said of the rest of the scene.
The lovers
raise
their voices in a jubilant duet.
Almost unconscious of
their
surroundings they are dragged apart.
The royal garments are
hastily
laid over them, and the curtain falls to the joyful shouts of
the
people as King Marke steps on board.
Tu sentiras alors que toi-même tu environnes tout ce que
tu
connais des choses qui existent, et que les existantes que tu
connais
existent en quelque sorte dans toi-même.--_Avicebron_
(MUNK).
*****************************************************************
ACT II.
If the essence of the drama lies in contrast and
surprises,
then "Tristan und Isolde" may be called the most dramatic
of
Wagner's works.
In Act I we had the picture of a woman
of volcanic temperament goaded to fury by cruelty and insult.
In Act II we have the same woman gentle, light-hearted, caressing,
with
nothing left of her past self except the irresistible force of
her
will.
Isolde is not restrained by any scruples about honour, nor
need
she have any.
In full possession of TRISTANO, the man she loves, she can
abandon
herself to the moment.
The music almost shows the flush upon
her
cheek, and she seems twenty years younger.
She is quite conscious
of
the inevitable end, and quite prepared to meet it, but that is
as
nothing in the fulness of the present moment.
Her words and her actions
are characterized by a playful recklessness, an _abandon_
which finds
admirable expression in a characteristic motive.
Thematically related
to this is another motive which we shall meet
with very frequently in the
sequel.
It is not directly
connected with any definite dramatic
event except generally with the
first scene.
The halting fourth quaver in
each half-bar imparts a
nervous restless character which at the meeting of
the lovers becomes
a delirium of JOY.
The events of the second act seem to take place on the evening of
the
day after the landing, or at least very soon after--exact
chronology
is not necessary.
The lovers have arranged a meeting in the
palace
garden in front of Isolde's quarters after the night has set in.
A
burning torch is fixed to the door; its lowering is to be the signal
to
Tristan to approach.
King Marke and the court are out on a hunt,
and the
signal cannot be given until they are out of the way.
The Prelude opens with an emphatic announcement of the principal
motive
of the act (the "daylight"--No. 3) in the full orchestra
without brass.
A
cantabile strain in the bass wood-wind continued in
the violoncelli with a
broken triplet accompaniment in the strings
seems to tell of the expected
meeting.
The new motive is heard
in its proper instrument, the flute,
but gives way to another which is
worked in conjunction with the love-motive,
settling again in B flat
as the curtain rises.
It is a clear summer night;
the horns of the
hunting-party grow fainter in the distance. Brangäne, with
anxiety in
her expression, is listening attentively and waiting for them to
cease
when Isolde enters.
A word must be said about the music of the hunting motive.
The key
is,
as has already been said, B flat major.
In the bass a pedal F is
sustained by
two deep horns or by the violoncelli, while six horns (or
more) on the stage
play a fanfare on the chord of C minor alternating
with that of F major.
A
very peculiar colouring is imparted to the
first chord, partly by the very
dissonant G (afterwards G flat),
partly by the minor third of the chord.
This
is a completely new
effect obtained from the valve horn, fanfares on horns
and trumpets
having before always been in the major, since the natural
scale
contains no minor chord. Brangäne and Isolde listen intently:
Isolde
thinks the horns are gone, and what they hear is only the murmuring
of
the stream and the rustling of the leaves.
The fanfare is taken up
by
wood-wind (K.A. 85'2(1)), and at last melts into a new sound,
with
clarinets in 6-8 time against muted violins and violas in
8-8,
beautifully suggestive of the rustling of leaves. Then the horns
are
heard no more. Brangäne, who has been on the alert, suspects a
trap
behind this hunting-party, which has been arranged by Tristan's
friend
Melot, but she doubts his good faith. Isolde gaily laughs at
her
cares; her heart is bursting and she recks of nothing but the
approach
of Tristan.
The music is almost entirely made up of her joyful
motive,
and there begins a first indication of that wonderful lyric
outpouring
which continues until it culminates in the Nocturne, and which
has
placed the second act of _Tristan_ on an eminence of its own,
apart
and unapproached.
She throws open the flood-gates of her heart as in words
recalling Lucretius:
Te, dea, te fugiunt venti, te nubila caeli
Adventumque tuum, tibi
suavis daedala tellus
Summittit floras, tibi rident sequora ponti.
She tells of the all-ruling, all-subduing might of "_Frau
Minne._"
The
ode is full of lyric inspiration, and is generally
recalled in the sequel by
the motive No. 11, which consists of two
parts, the melody in the first and
second violins, and that in the
bass--strictly a horn passage, but here in
the lower strings. The
accompaniment of the ode is throughout in keeping with
the rhapsodical
character of the words and melody: note the long, persistent
A of the
first and second violins in octaves at the words "_des
kühnsten
Muthes Königin, des Weltenwerdens Waltering_," followed by
their
joyous upward flight; the broken chords of the harp; the
swelling
upward semitones of flute, oboe, and clarinet bringing forth the
germ
of No. 11_b._; the trombone chords at the words "_Leben und Tod
sind
unterthan ihr_"; the arpeggio accompaniment of the violas, and
the
wonderfully poetic climax at the end, "_des Todes Werk ... Frau
Minne hat es
meiner Macht entwandt._" Brangäne's entreaties are
vain; again she cannot
feel what Isolde feels--notice the difference
between her melody and the
soaring freedom of Isolde's. A little later
(K.A. 99'4 seq.) Isolde's
immovable resolution is admirably expressed
by her persistence on one note.
At last she seizes the torch and hurls
it to the ground to a terrific
downward rush of the strings and the
yell of the death-motive in the
trumpets, the entire orchestra with
drums being heard together for the first
time.
*****************************************************
SCENE II.
Isolde signals to her lover with her white scarf to
music
redolent of Weber's _Oberon_, and of the transition to the
final
movement of Beethoven's sonata _Les Adieux_.
From the moment when
he
enters, neither words nor music come to full articulation; all is
swept away
in the whirlwind of the dominant rhythm of a variant of the motive No. 10, in still more rapid tempo.
For a
great
part of the time the entire orchestra is occupied, and until far
into
the scene the voices are quite unable to pierce the volume of
sound
from the orchestra.[41]
We take up the scene again when the storm has in some measure
subsided
at the words "_wie lange fern, wie fern so lang_" on p. 109
of
the piano score. To make anything like a detailed analysis of
the
elaborate working out of the daylight motive with other
subsidiary
motives which now follows would be impossible here, and would only
be
of use to the student of composition.
The music wanders through
many
keys, but C major is generally discernible as the centre round
which
the tonality oscillates.
The words demand closer attention, and I
must
invite those of my readers who have been driven back by
the
difficulties of the road to accompany me along the dull path
of
literal translation and comment.
The keynote of the dialogue is the opposition of day and
night,
typifying delusion and reality, avidyâ and Atman.
In the words
of
Aeschylos:
eudousa gap phraen ommasin lamprunetai.
e'n haemera de moir
aproskopos broto¯n.
The dialogue cannot be understood by the light of the rationalist
theory
that love and marriage are things to be contracted for the sake
of the
benefits which they bring to both parties.
Those who approach
it from this
standpoint must be content with the explanation sometimes
heard that "lovers
are to be excused if they behave like lunatics,
since it is part of their
condition." This is not quite the poet's
intention.
With Wagner love is a
_sacrifice_--or for those who so
prefer it, a _sacrament_.
Hence the deep
mystery of the kinship
of love, the vivifying principle, with death, typified
in the Hindu
emblem of the _ling_.
In the present scene it is often
difficult
to tell whether the strains denote the languishing of love or
the
fading away of life.
The best preparation would be to read the
opening
portion of the seventh book of Plato's _Republic_.
It is
difficult
to think that this passage was not in Wagner's mind when he
composed the
scene; although the imagery is rather different, the
thought is similar.
Plato is speaking of the roots of knowledge;
Wagner conceives of Love as
Plato does of knowledge, and in the minds
of both love and knowledge are the
same, as are also music and
philosophy. The idea comes at once to the front
in Isolde's
enigmatical
Im Dunkel du, im Lichte ich.
We remember that according to Plato there are two kinds of
blindness:
one is from living in the dark, the blindness of ignorance; the
other
from having gazed too steadfastly at the sun when the eyes were
not
strong enough to bear it.
Tristan was dazzled with the light of
the
sun, and therefore unable to see the truth.
For with Wagner the sun
is
not, as with Plato, the source of all light and truth, but rather
the
enemy of love and truth. To put it more shortly, the meaning of
the
line which I have quoted is: "You were blinded by ambition; I saw
more
clearly." Tristan understands her as meaning the light of the
torch
for the extinction of which he was so long waiting. Then follows
a
discussion in which she urges that it was through her act, in
pulling
down the torch, that he was led from the light of day to the
darkness
of love.
Porges here makes the true remark that the mainspring
of Tristan's life is ambition.
Love is naturally foreign to TRISTANO,
but that he is at last drawn to it by Isolde.
We resume at the piano arrangement.
The German construction
is
exceedingly difficult and confusing. I translate literally:
TRISTANO:
The day, the day that glossed thee o'er, that carried Isolde
away from me thither where she resembled
the sun in the gleam and light of
highest
glory.
What so enchanted my eye depressed my heart
deep down
to the ground.
How could Isolde be
mine in the bright light of day?
ISOTTA:
Was she not thine who chose thee?
What did
the wicked day lie
to thee that thou shouldst betray
thy beloved who was destined for
thee?
TRISTANO:
That which glossed thee o'er with transcendent
splendour, the
radiance of honour, the force of glory,
the dream of hanging my heart upon
these held me
in bonds.
The day-sun of worldly honours, which,
with
the clear refulgence of its shimmer, shone bright
upon my head with the
vain delight of its rays, penetrated
through my head into the deepest
recess of
my heart. That which there watched darkly sealed
in the
chaste night, that which unconscious I received
there as it dawned, an
image which my eyes did not
trust themselves to look at, when touched by
the
light of day, lay open gleaming before me.
In these mysterious words Tristan indicates the impression which
Isolde
had made upon him at their first meeting.
TRISTANO then regarded ISOTTA
through the
spectacles of his political ambition, with its vain
delight of personal
glory, which had penetrated from his head to his
heart.
It illumined the
image of Isolde slumbering yet unconscious
(_ohne Wiss' und Wahn_) in his
breast, and revealed it to the
day--namely, as a prize in the political game
which he was playing:
That which seemed to me so glorious and so noble,
I glorified before
the whole assembly; before all
people I loudly extolled the most lovely
royal bride
of the earth. The envy which the day had awakened
against
me, the jealousy which became alarmed at
my good fortune, the misfavour
which began to
weigh down my honour and my glory, I defied them
all,
and faithfully determined, in order to uphold my
honour and my glory, to go
to Ireland.
ISSOTA:
Oh vain slave of the day.
Here at the words "_Getäuscht von ihm...._" there
begins a
new development of the same motive which has occupied us
hitherto
with the first indications of the syncopated
accompaniment which forms so
prominent a feature of the following
part.
Explanations are now finished.
The
words begin to find wings.
For moments it seems as if all consciousness of
earthly things were
lost and the lovers were dissolved into dreamland:
Wo des Trugs geahnter Wahn zerrinne.
The modulation into the key of the death-motive, Ab,
is
effected through the chord of the augmented sixth.
The violins keep
up
a broken triplet accompaniment, trombones entering on the A
chord, oboe lightly breathing the principal motive, while
the
voice follows its independent melody, to us a simile of Wagner's
like
a boat designed to move exactly upon that sea, and under
those
conditions.
The whole passage is a vision of the death which they
are
awaiting, but without its bitterness, only as the portal of
eternity.
The voice brings the intervals of the chord which throws
an
atmosphere over the whole of the rest of the scene, and which
has
already been mentioned as "the soul of the Tristan music."
The intervals are enharmonically the same as those of the chord in
the
first bar of Prelude
--
F, Ab, B, Eb = F, Ab, B, Eb
-- but the treatment and surroundings are very different.
A reference to the draught occasions a joyful outburst on the part
of Tristan, which is of importance as explaining its real significance:
TRISTANO:
Oh hail to the drink.... Through the door
of death whence it
flowed it divulged to me wide and
open the joyful kingdom of night, wherein
before I
had only dreamed as one awake.
The words are accompanied by a violin figure in very rapid tempo,
which
was already prominent in the early part of the scene at the
meeting.
The
exultant episode soon ends, the stormy tempo continuing,
and by degrees all
subsides into the discordant motive which I have
quoted as the fourth of the
fundamental dramatic-musical motives, and
seeming to indicate the agony of
death.
Already there have been indications of a characteristic
accompanying
rhythmic figure consisting of one note repeated in triplets, and
now
as the lovers sink on a bank of flowers in half-conscious embrace,
its
nervous character is enhanced by a complex syncopation. The
passage
is in the mystic mood of Beethoven's last
sonatas
and quartets.
The triplet movement seems inspired by the
similar
movement in the sonata Op. 110 from the beginning of the slow
movement
_Adagio ma non troppo_ to the end.
In both the feverish
pulsation
indicates a morbid condition, leading in Beethoven to a
calmly
triumphant end.
The second movement of the quartet Op. 127,
_Adagio
ma non troppo_, with which Porges compares the scene, gives
a
different side, from which the morbid element is absent. The
rhythm
which dominates this scene is a development of the preceding
triplet
rhythm and must be taken quite strictly--3-4 time, the first
two
crotchets being divided into triplet quavers, the last into two.
The
syncopated chords are on the four strings, all muted, and each
divided
into two parts. In the tenth bar (counting from the double
bar
_mässig langsam_ 3-4) the woodwind (Cl. Hr. Fag.) enter,
sustaining
the chord "_sehr weich_," the first clarinet having
the upper note, quite
soft, like a sigh, forming a cadence after each
phrase of the voice part. The
extreme nervous tensity is emphasized
almost beyond endurance by the
incessant syncopated triplets of the
strings.
The lovers are raised entirely
away from the external world;
it is the sleep of approaching death into which
they sink; rather
dissolution into eternity.
The words begin to lose
coherence and meaning.
The words are often purely interjectional.
One passage may be noted for its interesting modulations,
the
alternating duet with the words
"Barg im Busen uns sich die Sonne"
It is in phrases of three bars in rising semitones,
Ab--A natural--A
natural--Bb, ending in a beautiful strain as they fall asleep in
one another's arms.
We have now in Brangäne's watch-song, and the instrumental nocturne
that
accompanies it, reached the highest point of the musical
expression, not of
the Tristan drama alone, but of all music since
Palestrina.
Before such music
silence is the only thing possible. It
scoffs at our words; it is not of this
earth.
Many will now prefer to
draw the veil, to pass over the little that I
have to say, and resign
themselves to the aesthetic impression.
For those who
feel curiosity
to know the mechanism by which its wondrous effect is brought
about, I
will analyse the instrumentation.
The thematic material employed
is
very slight; only here and there a motive from the preceding
is
indicated as if in a dream.
The syncopated pulsations are resumed in one-half the full number
of
strings muted, and continue to the end, as do the broken chords of
the
harp. The wood-wind generally sustain soft chords, clarinet,
oboe,
flute, and horn succeeding each other with the sighs from No. 12.
Brangäne's voice on the watch-tower behind the scene enters at once
in
3-2 rhythm against 3-4 in the orchestra.
Counting from
first
entry of the harp four pairs of unmuted violins detach
themselves from the
body of the strings, and play a quartet
independently, with free polyphonic
imitation, afterwards joined by
soli violin, viola, and 'cello, in such close
score and intercrossing
as to make the whole resemble a very closely woven
pattern of
exquisite beauty, but of which the single threads are
hardly
distinguishable.[42]
Half the violas, joined later by half
the
'cellos, maintain an accompaniment of broken chords.
They are
the
voices of the night through which are heard the long-sustained
notes
of Brangäne's watch-song, wood instruments here and there
uttering
motives like passing dreams from the lovers' melodies:
Realms where the air we breathe is love,
Which in the winds on the
waves doth move,
Harmonizing this earth with what we feel above.
At the end three trombones enter, sustaining slow chords.
The whole
body
of the strings, now united, soar once more and subside to rest.
The dialogue which follows is the most difficult in the whole work.
It will be necessary to take it sentence by sentence.
Tristan, as
the
cooler and more self-possessed of the two, sees more clearly
than
Isolde whither they are tending.
He has sunk into a state of
almost complete oblivion, from which Isolde wishes to rouse him.
He
replies
"Let me die, never to awake."
Isolde, scarcely
yet
realizing that this is indeed the only possible ending, asks
(139'4):
"Must then daylight and death together end our love?"
He
replies:
"Our love?
How can death ever destroy that?
Were mighty death standing before me
threatening body and life--that life which so
gladly I resign to my love--how
could its stroke reach our love?
Were
I to die for that love for which I
gladly would die, yet that love
itself is immortal and cannot end with me.
So
Tristan is himself
immortal through his love."
Now she grasps his
meaning:
Our love is the love of _both_--Tristan _and_ Isolde."
Then
there follows a little conceit on the virtue of the word "and,"
i.e.
the bond which unites them both together.
The notion is according
to
Kufferath taken from a couplet of Gottfried von Strassburg:
Zwei vil kleinin Wortelin, Min und Din,
Diu briuwent michel Wunder
uf der Erde.
Tristan continues:
"What would die in death (namely, this bodily
and
worldly life) is only that which comes between us and prevents us
from
loving and living."
Isolde returns to her play with the word
"and."
"What is true for you is also true for me.
Tristan can only
die
through Isolde's death."
The final conclusion is reached in the
great
duet beginning
"We die but to be united for ever in a
more perfect love." with the motive of love.
The duet ends with a reminiscence of the nocturne, Brangäne's
voice
entering with beautiful effect warning the lovers in the midst
of
their rhapsody.
The previous dialogue began
with
Isolde's rousing of Tristan with the words "Lausch' geliebter_."
Now
_he_ turns to her smiling and asks: "_Soll ich lauschen_?" and
_she_ replies:
"_Lass mich sterben_."
She has now attained full insight, and when he finally
and seriously puts the question to her:
"Shall I
return once more to the
day?"
she replies with enthusiasm
("_begeistert_"),
"Let the day yield to
death," and the piercing
harmonies indicate the wrench of the
parting.
Her mind is now
quite resolved.
To another decisive question she
replies:
"Eternal be
our night!"
It is this that Tristan has been waiting
for; until he knew
that Isolde was ready to accompany him he could not form
his own resolve.
Herein we have the key of the whole of this complex and
difficult
scene.
Wagner's aim was not, as might appear on a superficial
view,
to prolong a rhapsodical love-scene, but a dramatic one, to bring
the
two characters, each being such as he had conceived it, to a
full
understanding of each other before they could be united in death.
An introductory passage made of the love and desire motive simultaneously in
direct
and contrary movement--the union of opposites--leads to a duet
which opens
with the harmonies of No. 4 (K.A. 117).
Its character throughout is
triumphant joy, well supported by a running violin
accompaniment which
continues to the end.
In the course of it there
appears another important
motive, first in the clarinet.
All
ends in a crash of the entire
orchestra.
Kurwenal rushes in crying,
"Save yourself, Tristan"
and in the
next moment Marke and his court enter conducted by Melot.
"The wretched day
for the last time."
SCENE III.
Words and music of the next scene need little comment.
It
may be noted that a great part of Marke's address is in strophic
form,
with four lines of two accents followed by one of three
accents.
Tristan stands before Isolde screening her as well as he can,
crushed
to earth by Marke's calm dispassionate reproaches, with
short
interludes on the bass clarinet.
The music is of great beauty, but, the explanatory parts are
too
much extended.
The King calls upon Tristan to say what is the
deep,
mysterious cause of such a falling off in his honour.
Tristan
cannot
answer, but the love-motive in its most complete form, as in
the
opening of the Prelude, replies more clearly than words.
Tristan now turns full round to Isolde, and in impressive words asks her
whether she is prepared to follow him to the land to which he is now going.
It
t is the land where no sun shines, the dark land of night.
The voice takes
up the melody from an earlier part of the act.
Her reply is if
possible even more sublime.
When Tristan carried her
to a stranger's country,
she had to follow.
Now he calls her to his
own, to show her his possession
and heritage; how should she refuse?
"Let Tristan lead the way; Isolde will
follow."
He then calls upon Melot to fight with him.
But first lets fall
a
significant remark:
My friend he [Melot] was ... it was he who urged me on to wed thee
to the King.
Thy glance, Isolde,
has dazzled him too.
Out of jealousy he
betrayed me
to the King, whom I betrayed.
From these enigmatical words Wagner leaves us to conjecture what we can.
They fight.
At the first pass Tristan lets the sword drop from his hand.
He
falls wounded to the earth.
******************************************************
ATTO III:
Wagner has described the slow introduction to Beethoven's
C
sharp minor quartet as the saddest music ever written.
If there
is
anything sadder, it is the instrumental introduction to the third
act
of _Tristan und Isolde_.
Tristan, after being wounded by Melot,
has
been carried off by Kurwenal to his own home, Kareol in Brittania,
where he is
discovered lying asleep on his couch in the castle garden.
Kurwenal is by his
side.
Nothing could exceed the desolation of the
scene, nor the utter woe
expressed in the music which begins with a
new transformation of the
love-motive (1_a_).
Isolde alone can cure the sick man, and word has been
sent to her to come from
Cornwall.
Her ship is just expected, and the
shepherd who is on the
watch outside plays a sad strain so long as the ship
is not seen, to
be changed to a joyful one when she appears in sight.
The
plaintive
strain is played on the English horn, an instrument which in the
hands
of a skilful player is capable of very great expression, and,
unlike
most of the wood, has a considerable range of soft and loud, a
quality
of which Wagner has made very happy use.
The melody itself seems to have caused some heartburning to
many
excellent critics.
Even Heinrich Porges describes it as a sequence
of
tones apparently without rule,[43] and has not a word to say about
its
enthralling melodic beauty.
Really what difficulty there is, is
only
for the eye, and only in one note, the constantly recurring Gb
,
which is easily accounted for.
In a later part of the scene (p.
200), it will be found fully harmonized.
************************************************************
SCENE I.
In the first scene of the third act, Kurwenal attains
an
importance far beyond what he had in the first and second acts.
He,
too, is changed; he is no longer the rough, unmannerly servant,
the
events which have passed and the responsibility now resting upon
his
shoulders, have brought out the finer qualities of his nature.
There
is noticeable in his melody all through the act an air of freedom
and
lofty devotion quite different from his former self. He is, as
it
were, transfigured, and there is a refinement in his tenderness
which
may surprise those who have never observed what delicacy
and
sensitiveness are often hidden beneath a rough exterior among
the
lower classes.
After a short conversation between Kurwenal and the shepherd, who
looks
over the wall to ask how the patient is progressing, Tristan
awakes, asking
with feeble voice where he is. Kurwenal relates how he
has brought him to his
own home in Kareol, where he is soon to recover
from wounds and death. It is
some time before Tristan fully
understands, and as memory begins to awaken,
he tells of where he has
been, speaking as one inspired:
I was there where I have ever been, whither for
ever I go, in the
wide realm of the world-night, where
there is but one knowledge--divine
utter oblivion,
i.e. in that Brahm, that eternal negation, in which all physical
life
has its existence. The words are accompanied by _pianissimo_
chords
of trombones with tuba. It is the first time that the heavy
brass has been
heard in this act, and the effect is excessively
solemn. He continues:
How has this foretaste (of eternal night) departed
from me? Shall I
call thee a yearning memory that
has driven me once more to the light of
day?
The music of this and the following part is very interesting, but
the
modulations are too subtle and too evanescent for analysis.
The
motive, which has throughout been associated with the metaphor
of
daylight, is united with the languishing love-motive and with No. 4,
of
which three motives the following part is chiefly made up. The
combination is
expressed in Tristan's word, _"Todeswonne-Grauen,"_
"the awful joy of death."
The culminating point is reached at the
strongly alliterative words, _"Weh'
nun wächst bleich und bang mir
des Tages wilder Drang,"_ when for the moment
there is quite a
maze of real parts in wood-wind and strings. Immediately
following
is a very curious passage, nothing else than a succession
of
augmented chords in an upward chromatic scale, seemingly
illustrating
the words _"grell und täuschend sein Gestirn weckt zu
Trug und Wahn mein
Hirn."_
For a moment Kurwenal seems overawed
by the words and sufferings of
his beloved master.
His free bounding
spirits are gone, and he speaks like a
broken man.
But he soon
recovers his former mood as he tells of Isolde's
expected arrival.
The
news, scarcely comprehended at first, is the signal for
an outburst of
joy on the part of Tristan expressed in a new motive.
His joy is so violent that it brings on a return of
delirious
raving.
He seems to see the ship, the sails filling to the wind,
the
colours flying, but at that moment the sad strains of the
shepherd's
song tell him that the ship has not yet appeared.
He knows the
tune,
which once bewailed his father's death and his mother's fate when
she
brought him forth and died.
And now it tells of his own lot:
to long--and die; to die--and to long. No! Not
so! rather to long
and long, dying to long, and _not_
to die of longing.
He cannot find the death for which he longs.
In the following soliloquy the plaintive melody is woven into
the
orchestral accompaniment and taken by various instruments in turn.
I
resume at the words
"Der Trank, der Trunk, der furchtbare
Trank"_ (p.
207'1),
where the full orchestra accompanies with
brass and drums, the tempo
being still rather slow.
The draught! the draught! the terrible draught!
How it raged from my
heart to my head.... Nowhere,
nowhere may I rest. The night casts me
back
on the day for ever to feed the sun's rays on my suffering....
The fearful draught which has consigned me
to this torment, I, I myself
brewed it! Out of [my]
father's woe and [my] mother's anguish, out of
tears
of love ever and aye, out of laughing and weeping,
joys and
wounds, I have gathered its poisons. Thou
draught which I brewed, which
flowed for me, which I
joyfully quaffed, accursed be thou, accursed he
who
brewed thee.
He sinks once more into unconsciousness.
This drink, this
fearful
draught which has brought him into his present state, is the work
of
his whole life, the outcome of all his former deeds.
The despair
which
he feels now as his end approaches is expressed in the motive No.
18,
in unison in the wood-wind. Both music and words of this
soliloquy
offer great difficulties and need close study, with special
attention
to the tempo.[44] It ends with the F sharp minor chord in the
6-4
position with full brass and drums; then sudden silence in
the
orchestra as the voice sings the words _"furchtbarer Trank."_
This is the passage which perplexed the greatest of
all
Wagner singers, Schnorr von Carolsfeld, so much that it hindered
him
from taking the part of Tristan until light came to him from
Wagner
himself.
See the interesting account in Wagner's _Reminiscences
of
Schnorr von Carolsfeld_ in his collected works, viii. 221.]
As he lies in a swoon the wood-wind in turns continue the
malediction.
The tone then changes as Kurwenal stands beside him, uncertain
whether
he is alive or dead.
The wood softly sound the chord which we have
so
often heard before, No. 12, in syncopated triplets, as in the
great
duet in the second act (pp. 131 seq.). Above there floats a melody
of
exquisite tenderness, first in the oboe, then in the
clarinet,
continued later in a solo violin.
A horn quartet then begins the
soft
theme No. 13, Tristan's failing voice telling how he sees the
vision
of Isolde floating towards him over the sea. It is as if the
strains
of the garden scene were hovering in his dreams and calming
his
troubled thoughts. As he reads in Kurwenal's looks that she is not
yet
in sight, he once more threatens to become violent, when suddenly
the
joyful tune, the signal of Isolde's approach, is heard.
*********************************
SCENE II.
The catastrophe which now follows is one of the most
terrible
ever conceived by a dramatist.
Directly Kurwenal is away,
Tristan begins to
toss in his bed.
He seems almost to rise from the
dead. Strange, restless
orchestration and 7-4 time seem to show that
something is pending.
Several
motives are hinted at, and at last there
breaks out in the lower strings and
wood the motive No. 13 from the
second act, but now how changed! The tender,
dreamy melody, now in
distorted 5-4 rhythm, appears like a dance of death,
first in C major.
A short climax brings it in A major and again in C major
with the
utmost fury and the force of the entire orchestra. It is as if
the
very gates of hell had burst and every fiend were dancing around
him,
shouting:
"Live! live! and be for ever damned! false knight!
perjured
lover!" He springs from his couch, tears the bandages from his
body;
the blood streams from his wound; he staggers to the middle of
the
stage as he hears Isolde's voice and sinks into her arms as
she
enters.
The love-motive is heard in the wood-wind like a long
dying
breath as, breathing the word "Isotta" he expires.
The orchestra
dies away.
One chord is heard alone on the harp, and the
violoncello
continues the love-motive as he breathes away his life.
Isolde is left alone with Kurwenal, who has followed her.
The soliloquy
in which she laments the cruel destruction of the plan for
saving Tristan is
profoundly touching, both in the words and in the
melody:
Art thou dead?
Tarry but for one hour, one only
hour. Such anxious
days longing she watched, to
watch but one more hour with thee. Will
Tristan
beguile Isolde of the one last ever-short world-happiness
(No.
4). The wound? where? Let me heal
it, that, joyful and serene, we may share
the night
together. Not of the wound--die not of the wound!
Let us
both united close our eyes to the light of
heaven....
Sounds are heard without.
Another ship has arrived, and with it Marke
in
pursuit of the fugitive princess. Hastily the gates of the castle
are
barricaded. Brangäne's voice is heard imploring them not to
resist. It is
vain; Kurwenal leaves no time for parley, but rushes
upon them and is at once
pierced through. He is just able to reach his
master's body and die at his
side; when Marke has forced an entry he
finds nothing but death. Brangäne
notices that Isolde is still living,
and they now explain.
The secret of the
love-potion has been told to
King Marke, and he has hurried up to renounce
his intention of wedding
Isolde and to unite her to Tristan.
Another proof, if any were needed, that he is not
united
to her by any indissoluble tie.]
It needed but a few minutes' delay for all to have ended happily.
Why
did not the poet take the opportunity offered and spare us
the
harrowing scenes at the end?
Why could he not have lowered the
curtain
on the lovers united with Marke's full approval?
Dramatically
there
was no reason why he should not have done so.
But poetically it
was
impossible.
The whole of the story is brought about by Tristan's
guilt
which had to be expiated.
It is not diminished by Marke's
generosity.
Isolde now rises to bid the world her last farewell before she
departs
with Tristan.
The words of her swan-song have been described by
an English writer as "no more poetry than an auctioneer's
catalogue."
Of that I must leave my readers to form their own judgment;
they must, of course, be read with their context in the drama.
She is
speaking in
a trance, with ecstatic visions before her eyes.
The voice melody
is
mostly built upon the song of union in death in the second act, passing into the exultant motive which occurs in the
great
love-duet.
The orchestral accompaniment, beginning
quietly,
gradually swells into a torrent of music quite unrivalled
among
Wagner's great finales.
The end of _Götterdämmerung_ is
impressive
because of the wonderful gathering together of the musical
motives of
Siegfried's life, but as a musical composition it cannot
compare with the end
of Tristan.
As it approaches the end the
love-motive absorbs the whole
orchestra, passing into from the
prelude of the second act, rising
higher and higher.
The wonderful
euphony of tone, the harmony and
peacefulness which pervade the
surging mass of instruments are due to the
consummate art of the
instrumentation, and at last as the music seems to
leave this earth in
its heavenward flight we feel borne away upon its wings.
Isolde does not die.
she is carried upwards on the pinions of love, dissolved
in
the ocean of endless melody.
Her finish has given occasion to the witticism that the most
beautiful
thing in the work is the last note.
To this I see no reason to
demur.
It contains nothing more entrancing than the rise to the fifth of
the chord at her final cadence
hoechste Lust -- highest lust.
Once more the love-motive is softly breathed in the oboi and the
whole closes on the chord of B major three times repeated by the
orchestra.
**********************************************************
Wagner always looked upon himself as one who had broken a new path
in
art and done some of the first rough work, not as having completed
the
road. Those who seek to continue his work must have the same
goal
before their eyes as he had. It is the fate of a great man who
more
than others longs for human fellowship and love, to live alone
and,
after death, to overwhelm his contemporaries and successors;
he
occupies a space which leaves no room for others. In the thirty
years
which have elapsed since Wagner died, many great composers have
come
to the front, all of whom without exception show in their
external
physiognomy the impress of his personality. How many have
inherited
his spirit? How many have been actuated by his sincerity, his
fearless
resolve to follow his inspiration from on high at every
cost,
regardless of all personal advantage? Future ages alone can
answer
this question. The German nation is at the present day passing
through
a severe trial of its inner strength. The true _Sturm und
Drang_
began for Germany in 1871, and is now at its height. Her mission
is
indeed a noble one; it is to maintain the principles of law,
good
government, and pure religion; her genius lies in sober
conservatism
and high-minded monarchy; her heroes are Dürer, Luther, Frederic
the
Great, vom Stein, Richard Wagner. It is scarcely surprising if,
in
view of the history of Germany during the last hundred years, some
of
her sons have become intoxicated and in their zeal for German
ideals
threaten to destroy the very principles by which she has risen;
if
while affecting to despise the southern nations for libertinism
they
should themselves have cast off the bonds of self-restraint.
All
Europe is infected with the taint of unbridled licence
and
shamelessness, in every department of life, intellectual
and
political. On the stage the public revels in cruelty for its own
sake,
not in the service of justice; it prefers bombast to bravery,
lechery
to love; "the basest metal makes the loudest din"; while those to
whom
we look as our leaders for direction only pander to the
common
vulgarity and grow rich thereon.
There is one ingredient of art mentioned by Aristotle, although it
has
been little noticed by critics; his word for it is [Greek:
aedusma],
"sweetening." The poet should never forget that art, however
serious,
is intended for our pleasure; the hard edge of fate needs to
be
tempered by a recognition of the reality and beauty of positive
life.
The aim of the true poet is not to harrow the feelings with the
mere
picture of suffering or wickedness. We have enough of these in
actual
life without going to the theatre; the poet has to show them
as
subservient to a higher order of beauty and righteousness, and will
try
to mitigate the pain which they inflict. In the tragedies of the
greatest
dramatists the sweetness is so conspicuous a feature that it
might almost be
ranked as a third essential of tragedy, along with the
awaking of pity and
terror. The purpose of art is to show the unity of
truth and beauty, and thus
to enhance the power of both, not to
sacrifice either in favour of the other.
It teaches the divine lesson
of nature--perfect fitness united with perfect
loveliness.
One more word and I have finished. It is easy to hear too much
of
Wagner, and I think there can be no question that his works are
made
far too common in Germany. Wagner's characters are not those
of
everyday life; they are on a higher and more ideal moral level
than
ordinary men and women; they are semi-divine. Nor are his works
for
everyday hearing, but only for high festivals when we can enjoy
them
at our leisure with our minds prepared. For our daily bread we
have
other composers as great as he, and more nutritious and wholesome
for
continued diet--Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, and how many more
of
the highest rank! Caviare and champagne are excellent things at
a
feast, but we do not wish to live upon them.
Every cultured person should hold it a duty to visit the
Bayreuth
festival at least once in his life. He need not have any
musical
training; nothing more is needed than "a warm heart and open
senses,"
and, let me add, sincerity of purpose. Those who go expecting
perfect
performances and ideal surroundings will be disappointed. Immense
care
is bestowed on the preparation of the performances, and the site
and
building present incalculable advantages. On the whole
the
performances are better than elsewhere, but, excepting in
the
orchestra, there are many shortcomings, and the fashionable
audience
from Paris, and other capitals of Europe and America, is far
indeed
from what was contemplated by Wagner. All honour is due to
Madame
Cosima Wagner, who has worked unflinchingly against
immense
difficulties to maintain the honour of her husband's heritage. She
is
not to blame if she has not fully achieved the impossible; If the
tree
has partly withered, the fault is not with the gardener; it was
too
vigorous, too noble, to flourish in the soil of human society.
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