Chapter XXIII: Part III: The Great Music Dramas (1)

INTRODUCTORY

It is customary to divide the artistic career of Wagner into three periods, the first embracing the production of the early works and "Rienzi," the second that of "Der Fliegende Holländer," "Tannhäuser," and "Lohengrin," and the third that of the remaining works. It is the opinion of the present writer that the recognition of four periods would make the matter clearer to the lover of this master's creations. The early works, which are not heard except in one or two places, may be left out of consideration. We may then classify "Rienzi" as the production of the first period. "Der Fliegende Holländer" should stand in a period by itself, as representing the purely embryonic epoch of the true Wagner, while "Tannhäuser" and "Lohengrin" may properly be allotted to a third or transition period. The remaining works may be regarded as belonging to the period of the mature Wagner, though there would be no serious difficulty in subdividing this part of his artistic career. It seems to me, however, that no satisfactory end would be gained by doing so.

The reader of this book has already seen that in writing "Rienzi" Wagner was actuated by purposes entirely different from those which moved him in the creation of "Der Fliegende Holländer." The first of the lyric dramas presently to be examined was, as its maker said, a grand opera pure and simple. Then came the days of despair in Paris, when Wagner, hoping nothing for the future, gave free rein to his artistic impulses and produced the dramatic story of the unhappy Vanderdecken. In the creation of this drama nothing influenced Wagner's mind but the desire to write according to the dictates of his own artistic conscience. But he had not yet worked out a scheme of dramatic composition. He had only just come upon the fundamental ideas of his plan. Its details were still far away from his conception. "Embryonic," then, is the term to apply to this period of his productivity.

With "Tannhäuser" there entered into the field of his artistic vision those broader musical and ethical conceptions of the lyric drama which afterward developed themselves into a complex and influential system. With "Lohengrin" we see these ideas taking more definite shape. The literary and musical plan of the drama is more closely organised, and the musical style is more clearly defined. The diction becomes more akin to that of later works, and the methods show more certainty and more mastery. "Lohengrin" is a long advance beyond "Der Fliegende Holländer." It prepares us for such a work as "Die Meistersinger," though hardly in full for "Parsifal." It must be borne in mind that the original conception of "Die Meistersinger" belongs to the same period as "Lohengrin," and that although the music was not written till long afterward, the score must naturally have been coloured by the first thoughts of the work and so have come somewhat under the influence of the "Lohengrin" style.

In the early dramas we meet with Wagner's inclusion of ethical ideas in his designs. One seeks in vain among the old popular operas of the Rossini or Meyerbeer schools for a drama with a moral. But owing to Wagner's adoption of the myth as the material from which to erect his dramatic structures, the inclusion of an ethical lesson in each of his schemes followed almost inevitably. For mythology is essentially ethical. Wagner, however, humanised the teachings of the mythologies into which he delved by emphasising the beautiful idea of the saving grace of woman. He did not, perhaps, deliberately adopt as the motto of his works the line of Goethe, "The woman-soul leadeth us ever upward and on," but it may be inscribed upon them without violence to their intent. We may see by an examination of the original sources of the dramas how the importance of this thought in the works is due to the deliberate purpose of Wagner himself to bring it to the front. In some of the original stories it plays little or no part, but in the Wagner music drama the "Ewig-Weibliche" is always impressed upon the imagination of the auditor with all the skill of the dramatist and all the eloquence of the musician.

In "Lohengrin," as the reader can see for himself, the master made a special point of excluding the operation of this principle, because he desired to bring forward a study of a woman who had no love in her nature. With Wagner the woman-soul could be influential for good only when acting under the guidance of love. Ortrud acted under the dictates of hate, and her influence was therefore destructive, but ultimately futile. The reader will readily perceive the dramatic, poetic, and musical value of this thought. In all the Wagnerian dramas we are confronted with studies of the warring of good and evil principles. When the good principle is identified or associated with the love of woman, and that love is made the saving grace of its object, the dramatic force of the story is splendidly intensified, the scope of the poetry and the music immeasurably widened. Especially is the music benefited by the possibility of identifying the highest ethical idea of the poem with the most beautiful and potent of its emotions; for it is the peculiar privilege of the music to voice the emotional content of the drama, and when this becomes one with the ethical idea, the auditor is led by the music into the very shrine of the poet's imagination. The reader will note, too, that in those dramas in which the love of a woman does not figure as a saving influence, the tragic fate of the hero is accentuated, and the woman herself is made a more conspicuous embodiment of grief.

In most of the works of Wagner there is to be found a philosophical or metaphysical basis, and this is most easily discovered in the later dramas. The poet-composer was at different times deeply influenced by the writings of Feuerbach and Schopenhauer. From the former he obtained some of the vaguer conceptions of his philosophy, but the latter supplied him with definite ideas. It was in the early fifties that Wagner was a student of Feuerbach, and his mind eagerly caught at the thoughts contained indefinitely in such phrases as "highest being--the community of being," "death, the fulfilment of love," and such declarations as "only in love does the finite become the infinite." These ideas later took clearer shape in his mind when he gathered from Schopenhauer the sharply cut description of the negation of the will to live as the highest abstraction and elevation of thought.

With love figuring as a community of being, with death as its highest fulfilment, and with the absolute effacement of the desire of life as the loftiest aspiration of human passion, Wagner was equipped with a philosophical background for several of his most dramatic conceptions, notably for "Tristan und Isolde." Yet one has no difficulty in understanding his own assertion that the negation of the will to live and the community of being had entered his mind in an indefinite shape long before he read the works of the two philosophers, for they may be traced in the story of "Der Fliegende Holländer."

Some of Wagner's biographers, notably Houston Stewart Chamberlain, to whom this master was little short of a divinity, have devoted much space to the consideration of Wagner as a philosopher. The truth is that he was never a philosopher at all in the strict sense of that term. He was a groper after philosophies. He sought for a rational foundation for his artistic theories and endeavoured to found them upon metaphysical tenets borrowed from works which seemed to meet his needs. But there is no difficulty in perceiving that what always appealed to him in a philosophy was its poetic or dramatic material. That he was sometimes mistaken as to the real value of that material is not astonishing. The best text-books of Wagner's philosophy are his dramas. Therein one finds that the ethical side of a philosophy was what touched him most directly, and that it did so because of its close relation to the principles underlying the tragic in human experience. This is paying a higher compliment to Wagner than to call him a philosopher, for it is practically asserting that his dramatic nature was his guiding star.

It is easy to note that in "Der Fliegende Holländer" Wagner more nearly rid himself of those hampering historical details to which he objected than he did in "Tannhäuser," and more especially than in "Lohengrin." The legend of the "Flying Dutchman" was not one of the great world-thoughts, but it had the advantages of being founded on an incident which might be repeated at any time and in any place--namely, the periodical landing of the wanderer. In "Tannhäuser" and "Lohengrin," and in "Parsifal," Wagner used material found in the great cycle of tales belonging to the Christian mythology of Germany, England, and France. He found himself unable to avoid introducing some of the historical details contained in the original stories. Because of their sources and nature these three dramas have been classed as the Christian trilogy of Wagner in contradistinction to the Nibelung works, which are called the pagan trilogy. While this classification is justified by the nature of the works, it should be remembered that Wagner himself repudiated any intention to produce works charged with a religious purpose. Ethical ideas, indeed, he always cherished, but he denied that he taught Christianity. He recognised the assistance which art had given to religion, and he saw that in Greece the dramatisation of national religious beliefs had given to the stage a power unknown in modern times. But he himself was too wise to dream of making the lyric drama a mere corollary or illustration to the pulpit text. A passage in "A Communication to My Friends," quoted in the account of his resumption of work on "Tannhäuser," explains the mood which governed him in the composition of the score. He says that at the time he was yearning for a pure and unapproachable ideal of love. "What, in fine," he continues, "could this love-yearning, the noblest thing my heart could feel, what other could it be than a longing for release from the present, for absorption into an element of endless love, a love denied to earth and reachable through the gates of death alone?... How absurd, then, must those critics seem to me, who, drawing all their wit from modern wantonness, insist on reading into my 'Tannhäuser' a specifically Christian and impotently pietistic drift!"

We may now proceed to the study of the great dramas which have for so many years been the joy of the artistic mind and the torture of the indolent. The last word of this author on the subject of studying these dramas is this: Learn the text. By the text the music must be measured. By the text the music must be understood. By the music the text is illuminated and made vital. But every measure of Wagner's music is explained by the poetry. It is useless to go to the performance of a Wagner drama with your mind charged with thoughts of the music. Think of the play and let the music do its own work. That is what Wagner himself asks you to do, and it is the only fair test to which to put him. If his music vitalises the drama for you, it matters not whether you know the leading motives or the harmonic scheme or the orchestration. The work of the music is accomplished. But that work cannot be accomplished if you are in the dark as to its purpose. And in the dark you must always be unless you have a full knowledge of "what is going forward on the stage." To gain that you must know the entire text. Therefore the written word of the drama is your guide to its comprehension.

RIENZI

THE LAST OF THE TRIBUNES

Grand Tragic Opera in Five Acts.

First performed at the Royal Saxon Court Theatre, Dresden, October 20, 1842.

_Original Cast._

Cola Rienzi Tichatschek.
Irene Fräulein Wüst.
Steffano Colonna Dettmer.
Adriano Mme. Schroeder-Devrient.
Paolo Orsini Wächter.
Raimondo Vestri.
Baroncelli Reinhold.
Cecco del Vecchio Risse.
A Messenger of Peace Thiele.

Hamburg, 1844; Königsberg, 1845; Berlin, Oct. 26, 1847; Prague, 1859; Hanover, 1859; Weimar, Wiesbaden, and Darmstadt, 1860; Mayence, 1863; Stockholm, 1864; Bremen, Gratz, and Stettin, 1865; Würzburg, 1866; Schwerin, 1867; Rotterdam, 1868; Leipsic, 1869; Paris (in French translation by Charles Nuitter and J. Guillaume), April 6, 1869; Cassel, 1870; Augsburg, Carlsruhe, Vienna, and Munich, 1871; Mannheim and Magdeburg, 1872; Brunswick, 1873; Venice, 1874; Strassburg and Breslau, 1875; Bologna and Madrid, 1876; Cologne and Florence, 1877; Riga, 1878; New York, in German by the Pappenheim-Adams Co., Mar. 4, 1878, and in English, Jan. 27, 1879; London, Italian and English, 1879; St. Petersburg, 1879; Rome, Innspruck, Freiburg, and Ghent, 1880; Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1881, and Basle, 1882.

First performance in New York, Academy of Music, March 4, 1878, by the Pappenheim-Adams Company.

_Cast._

Adriano Mme. Eugenia Pappenheim.
Irene Miss Alexandre Human.
Cola Rienzi Charles Adams.
Paolo Orsini A. Blum.
Steffano Colonna H. Wiegand.
Raimondo F. Adolphe.
A Messenger of Peace Miss Cooney.

Conductor, Max Maretzek.

The names of the singers of Baroncelli and Cecco del Vecchio were not advertised nor mentioned in the newspapers.

RIENZI

The first of the series of great musical works by which the fame of Wagner was made does not call for extended discussion. Its source is familiar to every reader of English literature, and its method of construction and style of composition are those employed in the operas of the Meyerbeerian school. In the fact that Wagner wrote his own libretto, which awakened the interest even of Hector Berlioz, and in the immense vigour and wonderful colour of the score, lie the chief indications of the Wagner of the future. The reader has already learned how Wagner undertook this work with the deliberate purpose of making it a lever to pry open the doors of the Paris Grand Opéra. With that idea in mind it is not at all astonishing that he should have followed the model of Meyerbeer, who was in Wagner's early days the master spirit of the world of French music.

Wagner in subsequent years was extremely particular to keep before the minds of his friends the fact that it was not simply pecuniary success that he sought. He was eager to shine as an artist. That we must concede. He was, indeed, ambitious, and had a profound conviction of his own genius. But in these early days, when the inner artistic struggle found its companion piece in the outward fight for existence, Wagner had not reached the æsthetic convictions which afterward came to him. Therefore his conception of Bulwer's "Rienzi" was wholly as material for the libretto of a grand opera of the Meyerbeerian school. We have seen how his first attempt to enter Paris was with the scenario of "Die Hohe Braut," which was sent to Scribe, but lost in the mail for want of proper prepayment of the postal charges. We then find that Wagner wrote in 1837 to his Leipsic friend Lewald, who had some acquaintance in Paris, telling him that he had in his mind the book of "Rienzi."

"I intend," he said, "to compose it in the German language,
to make an attempt whether there is a possibility of
getting it performed in Berlin in the course of fifty
years, if God grant me so long a life. Perhaps Scribe will
like it, in which case Rienzi will learn to sing French in
a moment; or else this might be a way to goad Berliners
into accepting the opera if they were told that Paris was
ready to bring it out, but that preference was for once
to be given to Berlin; for a stage like that of Berlin or
Paris is absolutely necessary to bring out such a work
properly."

Nothing came of this correspondence, and Wagner's "Rienzi" was not permitted to astonish the Parisians. Nevertheless he began himself to write the libretto at Riga in the summer of 1838. In the spring of 1839 he had composed the music of the first two acts, and with this uncompleted score he set out from Riga on the voyage which ultimately landed him in Paris. Of his meeting with Meyerbeer at Boulogne, his exhibition of his manuscript to the great dictator, his completion of the work in the days of his hardship in Paris (in 1841), and the sending of the bulky score to Dresden the story has been told in the biographical part of this book. It need not now be repeated. Of the instantaneous success of the opera at Dresden there is plentiful evidence. It was in the style which the public of the time admired and it heaped up effects enough to dazzle the crowd. But it must be said for Wagner that he had some dim thought when he began this work of producing something really artistic. He was simply mistaken as to the method. At this point I must ask the reader to accept Wagner's own words as a better exposition of himself and his purposes than anything which I can invent. In the "Autobiographic Sketch" he says:

"Since I was so completely bare of Paris prospects, I took
up once more the composition of my 'Rienzi.' I now destined
it for Dresden: in the first place, because I knew that
this theatre possessed the very best material--Devrient,
Tichatschek, etc.; secondly, because I could more
reasonably hope for an entrée there, relying upon the
support of my earliest acquaintances. My 'Liebesverbot'
I now gave up almost completely; I felt that I could no
longer regard myself as its composer. With all the greater
freedom I followed now my true artistic creed in the
prosecution of the music to my 'Rienzi.'"

Further, let the reader note well these passages from "A Communication to My Friends":

"My home troubles increased; the desire to wrest myself
from a humiliating plight now grew into an eager longing
to begin something on a grand and inspiring scale, even
though it should involve the temporary abandonment of any
practical aim. This mood was fed and fostered by my reading
Bulwer's 'Rienzi.' From the misery of modern private life,
whence I could nowhere glean the scantiest stuff for
artistic treatment, I was borne away by the picture of a
great historico-political event, in lingering on which
I needs must find a salutary distraction from the cares
and conditions that appeared to me as nothing else than
absolutely fatal to art. In accordance with my particular
artistic bent, however, I still kept more or less to the
purely musical, or rather, operatic standpoint. This
Rienzi with great thoughts in his head, great feelings in
his heart, amid an entourage of coarseness and vulgarity,
set all my nerves a-quivering with sympathy and love; yet
my plan for an art-work based thereon sprang first from
the perception of a purely lyric element in the hero's
atmosphere. The 'Messengers of Peace,' the Church's summons
to awake, the Battle hymns--these were what impelled me to
an opera: 'Rienzi.'"...

"To write an opera for whose production only the most
exceptional means should suffice--a work, therefore, which
I should never feel tempted to bring before the public
amid such cramping relations as those which then oppressed
me, and the hope of whose eventual production should thus
incite me to make every sacrifice in order to extricate
myself from those relations,--this is what resolved me
to resume and carry out with all my might my former plan
for 'Rienzi.' In the preparation of this text also I took
no thought for anything but the writing of an effective
operatic libretto. The 'Grand Opéra' with all its scenic
and musical display, its sensationalism and massive
vehemence, loomed large before me; and not merely to copy
it, but with reckless extravagance to outbid it in its
every detail became the object of my artistic ambition.
However, I should be unjust to myself did I represent this
ambition as my only motive for the conception and execution
of my 'Rienzi.' The stuff really aroused my enthusiasm, and
I put nothing into my sketch which had not a direct bearing
on the grounds of this enthusiasm. My chief concern was
my Rienzi himself; and only when I felt quite contented
with him did I give rein to the notion of a 'grand opera.'
Nevertheless from a purely artistic point of view this
'grand opera' was the pair of spectacles through which I
unconsciously regarded my Rienzi-stuff; nothing in that
stuff did I find enthrall me but what could be looked at
through these spectacles. True, that I always fixed my gaze
upon the stuff itself, and did not keep one eye open for
certain ready-made musical effects which I might wish to
father on it by hook or crook; only, I saw it in no other
light than that of a 'five-act-opera,' with five brilliant
'finales,' and filled with hymns, processions, and the
musical clash of arms. Thus I bestowed no greater care upon
the verse and diction than seemed needful for turning out a
good and not trivial opera-text. I did not set out with the
object of writing duets, trios, &c., but they found their
own way in here and there because I looked upon my subject
exclusively through the medium of 'Opera.' For instance,
I by no means hunted about in my stuff for a pretext
for a ballet; but with the eyes of the opera-composer I
perceived in it a self-evident festival that Rienzi must
give to the People, and at which he would have to exhibit
to them in dumb show a drastic scene from their ancient
history: this scene being the story of Lucretia and the
consequent expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome. Thus in
every department of my plan I was certainly ruled by the
stuff alone; but, on the other hand, I ruled this stuff
according to my only chosen pattern, the form of the Grand
Opera. My artistic individuality, in its dealings with the
impressions of life, was still entirely under the influence
of purely artistic, or rather art-formalistic, mechanically
operating impressions."[32]

[Footnote 32: Prose Works, Vol. I., W.A. Ellis's translation.]

The reader will now understand the artistic ideas which governed Wagner in the production of his only "grand opera." He was, as he himself declares, true to the artistic creed which he cherished at that time, but that creed was opposed to the one afterward formulated in his mind. His first artistic beliefs were founded on the theory that not the ground-plan, but the external treatment, of the grand opera was at fault. He fancied that he could preserve the element which he has called "art-formalistic" and yet reach dramatic verity. He aimed at a consistent embodiment of character in his hero; he sought to give to all the factors of the opera, even such accessories as the ballet, a direct and powerful dramatic significance; but it had not yet come to him that he must, in order to make a consistent drama in music, sacrifice form to content, and get rid of the whole mechanical apparatus of the spectacular opera. Here, then, let me quote the most significant passage of all, one from the "Autobiographic Sketch":

"When in the autumn [of 1838] I began the composition
of my 'Rienzi,' I allowed naught to influence me except
the single purpose to answer to my subject. I set myself
no model, but gave myself entirely to the feeling which
now consumed me, the feeling that I had already so far
progressed that I might claim something significant from
the development of my artistic powers, and expect some not
insignificant result. The very notion of being consciously
weak or trivial--even in a single bar--was appalling to me."

The frequent iteration of such statements shows how anxious Wagner was in subsequent years lest he should be accused of deliberately pandering to that depraved public taste which he decried. In his endeavour to treat the grand-opera form honestly he accepted as his musical models several of his predecessors. In "Die Feen" he believed that he was following the lead of Beethoven, Weber, and Marschner, and in "Das Liebesverbot" he turned for help to Auber and Bellini. In "Rienzi" he utilised elements from all of these, and added to them the pomp of Spontini and the external glare of Meyerbeer. The libretto, as he says, is simply a good opera book. One looks in vain through it for more than traces of the dramatic power and real poetry to be found in the later works. Similarly the music is just good opera music of the most pretentious kind. It glitters, but seldom glows. It astonishes, but seldom moves. The instrumentation shows many of the idiosyncrasies of the later Wagner, but it is generally without inner strength. The whole work is superficial, and calls for precisely the same sort of criticism as the operas of Meyerbeer do. And this result came in spite of the fact that Wagner, according to his own account, was appalled by the very thought of being consciously weak or trivial for a moment. That he was weak and trivial often will be patent to any hearer of the opera. Indeed, one need not go so far as that. The overture is played often in concert and a novice can easily detect the bombastic emptiness of its resounding finale, even at the same time as he notes the resemblance of the sequences of chords in the brass to some afterward heard in "Der Fliegende Holländer." But Wagner himself tells us that before he had completed "Rienzi" he became doubtful as to the possibility of bringing about any real success by the methods which he was employing. He began to foresee the future with its wide departure for him from the traditions of opera. He began to realise that he could not cater to the extant public taste, but must create for himself a new one. But it was not till despair made him withdraw himself from all relations to the outer world that he entered upon the development of the true Wagnerian music drama.

"Rienzi," then, must be viewed simply as a grand opera of the old-fashioned sort. We must regard its libretto as an exemplification of the clever ground-plan of Meyerbeer, its music as the artistic offspring of the "Jewish banker to whom it occurred to write music," of Spontini, Rossini, and other composers of the pseudo-grand style. The story of the opera is substantially that of Bulwer's novel, and needs no review here. In the making of this book Wagner was simply an adapter. He re-created nothing. In his other works we shall find that he added to the literary substance of every subject which he treated. But such was not the case with "Rienzi." The joints are plainly visible. The carpenter work is creditable, but it is not architecture. One might almost say the same thing about the music. It is in the main good, workmanlike music, with inspiration carefully fanned by the breaths of older composers. Occasionally the real Wagner peeps out and there are some passages of fine vigour and even expressiveness. But this is an opera in which one can go through the score and pick out the "good things," just as one could from the old scores of Donizetti and Bellini.

The reader of Bulwer, for instance, will miss from the opera the figure of Nina, the wife of Rienzi, but he will find that her place is well filled by the sister, Irene, of whom Wagner makes a conspicuously noble character. Furthermore Wagner in drawing the character of his hero went to the original historical sources and so made him a stronger personage than Bulwer did. "Un signor valoroso, accorto, e saggio" is this Rienzi, as Petrarch called him. He speaks in broad and commanding accents, as in his address to the nobles and in the prayer. And it is at such points that we find the best music. The prayer is set to one of the finest melodies in all opera. Again we see that in the chorus and solo of the messengers of peace Wagner found material for good writing of both verse and music. The prayer opens the fifth act, when Rienzi, feeling that the end is near, calls on the Lord to preserve the work which he has achieved.

"Allmächt'ger Vater, blick' herab,
Hör mich im Staube zu dir fleh'n!
Die Macht, die mir dein Wunder gab,
Lass jetzt noch nicht zu Grunde geh'n!"

Almighty Father, look on me!
Hear thou my humble fervent prayer!
Let not the power I had from Thee
Pass from me in this dark despair.

With the second stanza comes the fine melody heard in the overture:

[Music:

Du stärktest mich, du gabst mir hohe Kraft,
du liehest mir erhab'ne Eigenschaft,
zu helfen dem, der niedrig denkt,
zu heben, was im Staub versenkt. &c.]

Thou gavest me of Thy all-wondrous might,
High gifts, O Lord, didst Thou on me bestow,
To light up those who live in night,
To raise up those who bend so low.

M. Schuré has said:

"'Rienzi' is a work of the composer's youth, unequal, but
already full of force and strength, brilliant and full
of fire. The reformatory ideas of the author are not yet
apparent. The libretto is cut according to the rules of
tradition--choruses, ensembles, resounding marches, grand
airs, trios, septets, ballet--nothing is wanting. The
music, without betraying any imitation in particular,
has a strong Italian colouring, but the individuality of
the composer is shown as well in the heroic grandeur of
his broad melodies as in the warmth and riches of his
instrumentation. In short, 'Rienzi' is already the work of
an independent master without being that of an innovator."

In the last sentence M. Schuré has nearly touched the truth, but I am inclined to think that he and Mr. Hueffer somewhat overrate the importance of this work. It is most probable that the melody of the prayer will come to be accepted as the one inspired thing in the whole score. Certainly the air of Adriano, so often sung on the concert stage, is but a weak and bombastic imitation of a Weber grand aria of the style of "Ocean, thou mighty monster," with leanings toward the manner employed in the monologue of Ortrud in Act II. of "Lohengrin."

We may therefore dismiss "Rienzi" as a mistake of Wagner's youth. He had not yet found himself. He might have achieved popularity and made money with this sort of writing, and knowing his great vanity and love of luxury we should not have been surprised if he had continued to produce works of this pattern if the first one had brought him immediate success. We ought, perhaps, to be very grateful to the years of privation in Paris which developed the real Wagner, though it is possible that his own ambition to stand alone would have had the desired result in the course of time, even had the years 1840 and 1841 been easier for him.

DER FLIEGENDE HOLLÄNDER

Romantic Opera in Three Acts.

First performed at the Royal Saxon Court Theatre, Dresden, Jan. 2, 1843.

_Original Cast._

Senta Mme. Schroeder-Devrient.
The Dutchman Wächter.
Daland Risse.
Erik Reinhold.
Mary Mme. Wächter.
Helmsman Bielezizky.

Conductor, Richard Wagner.

Riga and Cassel, 1843; Berlin, 1844; Zurich, 1852; Schwerin, Weimar, and Breslau, 1853; Frankfort and Wiesbaden, 1854; Hanover, Carlsruhe, and Prague, 1857; Mayence and Vienna, 1860; Königsberg, 1861; Lucerne, 1862; Munich, 1864; Stuttgart, 1865; Olmütz, 1866; Rotterdam and Dessau, 1869; Hamburg, Darmstadt, Mannheim, Gratz, 1870; London (Italian), July 23, 1870; Vienna, Brunswick, and Brünn, 1871; Brussels and Stockholm, 1872; Budapesth, Stettin, Augsburg, Magdeburg, Sondershausen, and Baden, 1874; Strassburg, 1875; Lübeck, Freiburg, and Salzburg, 1876; Philadelphia, 1876; Dublin and Bologna, 1877; Würzburg, 1877; New York, Jan. 26, 1877; Innspruck, 1880.

First performed in America as "Il Vascello Fantasma," in Philadelphia, Nov. 8, 1876, by the Pappenheim Company.

First performed in New York at the Academy of Music, Jan. 26, 1877, by the Kellogg English Opera Company.

_Cast._

Senta Clara Louise Kellogg.
The Dutchman W.T. Carleton.
Daland Mr. Conly.
Erik Mr. Turner.

Conductor, S. Behrens.

First performed in New York in German at the Academy of Music, Mar. 12, 1877.

_Cast._

Senta Mme. Eugenia Pappenheim.
The Dutchman A. Blum.
Daland Mr. Preusser.
Erik Christian Fritsch.
Mary Miss Cooney.
Steersman Mr. Lenoir.

Conductor, A. Neuendorff.

THE FLYING DUTCHMAN

"Der Fliegende Holländer" is the first of the works of Wagner which shadow forth the style, the system, and the mastery of lyrico-dramatic art found in his later works. All these elements of this master's art, however, are here found in an embryonic and experimental stage. Nothing is developed, and nothing is definite. Wagner himself did not realise the significance or possible extent of his movement. He was at this time wholly unconscious of the fact that he was laying the foundations of a new method of composition in musical drama. He was aiming only at writing an expressive score, in which the characters of his play, their emotions and their actions, should be drawn with all the powers of music.

The work was written at Meudon in the spring of 1841. All except the overture was completed in seven weeks. Of the fate of the first sketch of this lyric drama, of the hardships of the composer's life at the time of its execution, of the first performances, the reader has already been told. He has seen also how the stormy voyage to London impressed upon his mind the legend of the "Flying Dutchman" with which he had already made acquaintance. It now becomes our duty to examine the sources from which Wagner derived the poetic materials of this play and to ascertain how he treated them. In the "Flying Dutchman" the poetic ability of the master was first exhibited. He ceased to be a mere libretto-writer and became a dramatic poet. His version of the famous old legend is a lovely one, and much of its increased beauty is the product of his own genius. It was, as he himself said in the oft-quoted "Communication," the "first folk-poem that forced its way into my heart, and called on me as man and artist to point its meaning, and mould it in a work of art."

It was while in Riga that he made his first acquaintance with the story. "Heine takes occasion to relate it," he says, "in speaking of the representation of a play founded thereon, which he had witnessed--as I believe--at Amsterdam. This subject fascinated me, and made an indelible impression upon my fancy; still it did not as yet acquire the force needful for its rebirth within me." The story of Heine was in "The Memoirs of Herr Schnabelewopski." It is not certain whose play it was that Heine meant. Francis Hueffer, in his "Richard Wagner,"[33] expresses the belief that the play was that of Fitzball, which was running at the Adelphi Theatre in 1827, when Heine visited London. Mr. Hueffer bases his argument largely on the fact that two features of Fitzball's play, both additions to the old legend, are mentioned by Heine as appearing in the drama which he saw. These are the pictures of the Dutchman on the wall of Daland's house, and the taking of a wife by the wandering seaman.

[Footnote 33: The Great Musicians Series, Charles Scribner's Sons.]

Mr. Hueffer adds:

"Here, however, his indebtedness ends. Fitzball knows
nothing of the beautiful idea of woman's redeeming love.
According to him the Flying Dutchman is the ally of a
monster of the deep, seeking for victims. Wagner, further
developing Heine's idea, has made the hero himself to
symbolise that feeling of unrest and ceaseless struggle
which finds its solution in death and forgetfulness alone.
The gap in Heine's story he has filled up by an interview
of Senta with Erik, her discarded lover, which the Dutchman
mistakes for a breach of faith on the part of his wife,
till Senta's voluntary death dispels his suspicion."

It should be noted that Mr. W. Ashton Ellis, whose translation of Wagner's prose works has been so often quoted, wrote a paper to disprove the theory of Mr. Hueffer as to the play having been Fitzball's. The matter, after all, is not one of great importance. Wagner got his materials from Heine's book, which contained a version of a very old legend, and in making the text of his lyric drama, he altered and improved that material as Mr. Hueffer has indicated.

The late Mr. John P. Jackson, formerly musical editor of _The New York World_, in the admirable introduction to his translation of the text of this opera, at one time used at the Metropolitan Opera House, says that the Fitzball play was founded on a version of the legend printed in _Blackwood's Magazine_ in May, 1821. That version runs thus:

"She was an Amsterdam vessel and sailed from port seventy
years ago. Her master's name was Van der Decken. He was a
staunch seaman, and would have his own way in spite of the
devil. For all that, never a sailor under him had reason to
complain; though how it is on board with them nobody knows.
The story is this: that in doubling the Cape they were a
long day trying to weather the Table Bay. However, the
wind headed them, and went against them more and more, and
Van der Decken walked the deck, swearing at the wind. Just
after sunset a vessel spoke him, asking him if he did not
mean to go into the bay that night. Van der Decken replied,
'May I be eternally damned if I do, though I should beat
about here till the day of judgment.' And to be sure, he
never did go into that bay, for it is believed that he
continues to beat about in these seas still, and will do
so long enough. This vessel is never seen but with foul
weather along with her."

This is practically the original story of the "Flying Dutchman." It is no new tale, but, like nearly all myths, a development. In the literature of Greece we find the wanderer in the person of Ulysses, yearning for hearth and home and the joys of domestic love. In the early period of Christianity the myth entered and gave us the gloomy figure of the Wandering Jew, accursed and hopeless of all save the end in oblivion. With the Dutch the legend in the Middle Ages was easily transferred to their own favourite element, the sea, whereon at that time they were among the most daring and skilful. The struggle of the Dutchman against contending winds and waves typified their own battles with the powers of Old Ocean, and their determination to conquer at all hazards.

Later writers than those of the dark ages endeavoured to give this legend an end. In its original form it stands suspended with the Dutchman a creature without hope. Captain Marryatt, in his "Phantom Ship," releases the wanderer from his ceaseless journeyings by means of an amulet, or religious charm. Sir Walter Scott's version of the tale--wherever he found it--is a curiously poor one. According to him, the vessel was laden with precious metal. A murder was committed on board, and as a punishment for it a plague fell upon the crew. No port would permit the ship to enter, and it was doomed to float about aimlessly forever. There is no poetry and a total absence of the personal tragedy in that version. The idea of the salvation of the wanderer through the self-sacrificing love of woman, an idea to be found in literatures much older than this, was introduced into the story before Heine saw the play of which he wrote. It is quite possible that Heine never saw such a play, yet the fact remains that in the Fitzball drama the Dutchman did take a wife, only, however, to make an offering of her to a sea monster--a grotesque and utterly unpoetical idea.

Wagner got his beautiful ending from Heine. Mr. Hueffer has taken the trouble to retail the story as told in "The Memoirs of Herr von Schnabelewopski." The sentence of Van der Decken is that he shall wander till doomsday unless he shall be released by a woman faithful until death. The Devil does not believe in the existence of women of that sort, and therefore allows the wanderer to go ashore once every seven years to see if he can find such a one. (How was it that the Devil was so often mistaken about women?) He meets with failure after failure, till finally he falls in with a Scotch merchant, whose daughter has already learned his story and formed a romantic attachment for him. She has his picture in her room, and when her father, having accepted the Dutchman's offer for her hand, brings him home, she at once recognises him and determines to sacrifice herself to save him. Just at this point Herr von Schnabelewopski is called away for a short time, and when he returns he sees the Dutchman about to sail away without his wife. He loves her and would save her from his fate. But she, true to her vow, ascends a high rock, whence she throws herself into the sea. The spell is broken and the united lovers enter eternal rest. The reader will now see that it was the void occasioned by the temporary absence of von Schnabelewopski which Wagner filled with the interview between Senta and Erik. Except for the introduction of this character, a tenor, necessary to afford both dramatic and musical contrast to the story, Wagner has followed Heine closely, as lovers of the dramatist's works will at once perceive.

Out of this material Wagner constructed a drama which at the time of its production was as novel as "Tristan und Isolde" was in later years. In it we first meet with this master's remarkable power of concentrating in each scene the emotional moods and pouring them out to us in the music, while in those portions of the score devoted to musical description, such as the sea music and the sailors' choruses, we may note his ability to make dramatic atmosphere. How these powers reveal themselves to us in the grand duo of the last scene of Siegfried and the Waldweben! It is worth while hearing "Der Fliegende Holländer" occasionally, if only to study the embryonic Wagner. Now let us see how Wagner himself regarded the subject-matter of his story.

"The figure of the Flying Dutchman," he says, "is a mythical creation of the folk. A primal trait of human nature speaks out from it with a heart-enthralling force. This trait, in its most universal meaning, is the longing after rest from amid the storms of life." He traces the older forms of the legend as seen in the stories of Ulysses and the Wandering Jew, and then says:

"The sea in its turn became the soil of Life; yet no longer
the landlocked sea of the Grecian world, but the great
ocean that engirdles the earth. The fetters of the older
world were broken; the longing of Ulysses, back to home and
hearth and wedded wife, after feeding on the sufferings
of the 'never-dying Jew' until it became a yearning for
Death, had mounted to the craving for a new, an unknown
home, invisible as yet, but dimly boded. This vast-spread
feature fronts us in the mythos of the 'Flying Dutchman,'
that seaman's poem of the world-historical age of journeys
of discovery. Here we light upon a remarkable mixture, a
blend, effected by the spirit of the Folk, of the character
of Ulysses with that of the Wandering Jew. The Hollandic
mariner, in punishment for his temerity, is condemned by
the Devil (here obviously the element of Flood and Storm)
to do battle with the unresting waves to all eternity.
Like Ahasuerus, he yearns for his sufferings to be ended
by Death; the Dutchman, however, may gain this redemption,
denied to the undying Jew, at the hands of--a Woman who, of
very love, shall sacrifice herself for him. The yearning
for death thus spurs him on to seek this Woman; but she is
no longer the home-tending Penelope of Ulysses, as courted
in the days of old, but the quintessence of Womankind; and
yet the still unmanifest, the longed-for, the dreamt-of,
the infinitely womanly Woman--let me out with it in one
word: the _Woman of the Future_."

With this broad, poetic view of his subject-matter Wagner set out to write a text book which should be a real drama and not a mere libretto. "From here," he says, "begins my career as poet, and my farewell to the mere concoctor of opera texts." In this drama are embodied the fundamental ideas of the entire Wagnerian system. Here they appear to us in their first stage of development, incomplete, unformed, and scarcely recognised by their own creator. The value of the mythologic matter, however, already forced itself upon the mind, and the conviction of its suitability to musical embodiment, because freed from hampering accessories, came to him at this period of his career. I have already quoted his words as to the employment of myths as subjects for music dramas. I may be pardoned for quoting here a passage from my introductory essay in the Schirmer vocal score of the drama:

"Wagner divined clearly the necessity of subordinating mere
pictorial movement to the play of emotion, and it will
easily be discerned that the three acts of 'The Flying
Dutchman' reduce themselves to a few broad emotional
episodes. In the first our attention is centred upon the
longing of the Dutchman, and in the second upon the love
of Senta. In the third we have the inevitable and hopeless
struggle of the passion of Erik against Senta's love. All
music not designed to embody these broad emotional states
is scenic, such as the storm music and choruses of the
sailors and the women. Furthermore the student will do well
to note that the chief personages of the story are types.
Van der Decken is typical of the man struggling under the
burden of his own follies, while Senta is the embodiment
of the woman-soul, which, according to Goethe, 'leadeth us
ever upward and on.'"

In the structure of this drama the reader will find that Wagner did not abandon the old operatic forms. He employed duets, solos, choruses, etc., as an opera composer would. He did not use the leitmotiv system, but only hit upon its fundamental idea. He did not use the staff-rhyme. In fact we find in this work only a perfectly sincere attempt to make a good play and to express its feelings in music. He says himself of this work:

"In it there is so much as yet inchoate, the joinery of the
situations is for the most part so imperfect, the verse
and diction so often bare of individual stamp, that our
modern playwrights--who construct everything according
to a prescribed formula, and, boastful of their formal
aptitude, start out to glean that matter which shall best
lend itself to handling in the lessened form--will be
the first to count my denomination of this as a 'poem' a
piece of impudence that calls for strenuous castigation.
My dread of such prospective punishment would weigh less
with me than my own scruples as to the poetical form of
the 'Dutchman,' were it my intention to pose therewith
as a fixed and finished entity; on the contrary I find a
private relish in here showing my friends myself in the
process of 'becoming.' The form of the 'Flying Dutchman,'
however, as that of all my later poems, down even to the
minutiæ of their musical setting, was dictated to me by the
subject-matter alone, insomuch as that had become absorbed
into a definite colouring of my life, and in so far as I
had gained by practice and experience on my own adopted
path any general aptitude for artistic construction."

In the "Autobiographic Sketch" he tells us how, after disposing of the first sketch to Pillet, he set to work to compose his own music.

"I had now to work post-haste to clothe my own subject
with German verses. In order to set about its composition
I required to hire a pianoforte; for, after nine months'
interruption of all musical production, I had to try to
surround myself with the needful preliminary of a musical
atmosphere. As soon as the piano had arrived, my heart beat
fast for very fear; I dreaded to discover that I had ceased
to be a musician. I began first with the 'Sailors' Chorus'
and the 'Spinning Song'; everything sped along as though on
wings, and I shouted for joy as I felt within me that I was
still a musician."

This statement affords sufficient evidence that nothing revolutionary was in Wagner's mind when he sat down to compose "Der Fliegende Holländer." No vision of the polyphonic web of "Tristan und Isolde" rose in his brain; no conception of an operatic score in which every melodic idea should have a direct message. He began with two purely lyric numbers, and it was not till he reached the ballad of Senta in the second act that the first principles of the leitmotiv system dawned upon him, and then only in such shape as they had occurred to others before him. The ballad as a whole is a purely lyric number, written in a plain song form; but in it occur the two principal typical themes of the drama. The first is that designed to represent the Dutchman as a wanderer without rest:

[Music]

The second theme, a broad, flowing, tender melody, is designed to typify the redeeming principle, the self-sacrificing love of the woman.

[Music]

In the "Communication to My Friends" he says:

"In this piece I unconsciously laid the thematic germ
of the whole music of the opera: it was the picture _in
petto_ of the whole drama such as it stood before my soul;
and when I was about to betitle the finished work, I felt
strongly tempted to call it a 'dramatic ballad.' In the
eventual composition of the music the thematic picture,
thus evoked, spread itself quite instinctively over the
whole drama as one continuous tissue; I had only without
further initiative to take the various thematic germs
included in the ballad and develop them to their legitimate
conclusions, and I had all the chief moods of this poem,
quite of themselves, in definite shapes before me. I
should have had stubbornly to follow the example of the
self-willed opera-composer had I chosen to invent a fresh
motive for each recurrence of one and the same mood in
different scenes; a course whereto I naturally did not feel
the smallest inclination, since I had only in mind the most
intelligible portrayal of the subject-matter and not a mere
conglomerate of operatic numbers."

One other musical thought in this work must here be enumerated because of a special meaning which it had for its composer. In 1866 Ferdinand Praeger was dining with Wagner in Munich, when the conversation turned upon "the weary mariner, his yearning for land and love, and Wagner's own longing for his fatherland at the time he composed the 'Dutchman.'" Wagner went to the piano, and said, "The pent-up anguish, the homesickness that then held possession of me, were poured out in this phrase":

[Music]

"At the end of the phrase," continued Wagner, "on the diminished seventh, in my mind I brooded over the past, the repetitions, each higher, interpreting the increased intensity of my sufferings."

The "Flying Dutchman," then, is the product of Wagner's genius in its embryonic stage. The grasp of tradition and operatic convention upon his mind is not yet shaken off. The chorus of sailors in the first finale is in a popular, rhythmical, melodic vein and might almost have been written by a Frenchman. The opening of Act II. is constructed on wholly operatic lines, with its gay chorus followed by the dramatic ballad. Then follow two purely operatic scenes, the duets of Senta and Erik and Senta and the Dutchman. In the last act the paucity of material forced Wagner to spin his web very thin indeed. He consumes as much time as possible with his theatrically contrasting choruses of merry-making betrothal guests and ghostly wanderers of the sea. The machinery of the stage creaks through the whole scene till the entrance of Senta and Erik brings us once more face to face with human nature. The scene is brief, and it is not to be praised. It would have been more beautiful to make the Dutchman depart out of sheer love for Senta and unwillingness to win salvation through her sacrifice. But the act ends effectively. Perhaps the most striking proof in all this curious score that Wagner had not yet found himself is in the duet of Daland and the Dutchman in Act I. The Dutchman asks if Daland has a daughter and on receiving an affirmative reply, says, "Let her be my wife." Daland, "joyful yet perplexed," exclaims:

"Wie? Hör ich recht? Meine Tochter sein Weib?
Er selbst spricht aus den Gedanken!"

And with this Wagner ushers in a very Italian duet:

[Music:

Wie? Hör' ich recht? Meine Tochter sein Weib?
Er selbst spricht aus den Gedanken.]