Chapter XXIV: Part III: The Great Music Dramas (2)

On the other hand, there are not a few manifestations in "Der Fliegende Holländer" of the future Wagner. In the first place, the overture is a splendid exemplification of his musical style and his method of construction and it employs some of the materials of the opera in a masterly manner. Again the solo of the steersman, succeeded by the outburst of the storm and the appearance of the Dutchman's ship upon the raging deep, produces an effect similar to that of the song of the sailor followed by the passionate utterances of Isolde in the first scene of "Tristan und Isolde." The solo of the Dutchman in Act I., while more conventional in its melodic manner than Wagner's later music, gives a foretaste of the power exhibited in the second act of "Lohengrin" in expressing dark and bitter moods. In the musical and dramatic characterisation of Daland one may discern something of the facility which afterward made so much of Hans Sachs. Indeed in characterisation more than in anything else does this opera herald the coming master, for Van der Decken, Senta and Daland are clearly and completely drawn musically and dramatically. They are living figures in the gallery of Wagner portraits; and while we may not deny that "Der Fliegende Holländer" is a comparatively weak production, we would not readily part with the dreamful, devoted, ill-fated Senta.

In the instrumentation, also, one finds evidences of the real Wagner. The high, shrieking brass chords of the diminished seventh, heard in the "Rienzi" overture, are here repeated; the rich use of divided strings is found; and the beautiful employment of wide harmonies in the wood wind leads the mind forward toward the final exit of Elizabeth in "Tannhäuser" and the entrance of Elsa in "Lohengrin." But, view this work as we may, we cannot regard it as standing beside the two lyric dramas of the transition period. It is the work of an independent and gifted mind of 28, a work of radiant promise, but not of mature genius.

TANNHÄUSER UND DER SÄNGERKRIEG AUF WARTBURG

Grand Romantic Opera in Three Acts.

First performed at the Royal Saxon Court Theatre, Dresden, October 19, 1845.

_Original Cast._

Hermann, Landgrave of Thuringia Dettmer.
Tannhäuser Tichatschek.
Wolfram von Eschenbach Mitterwurzer.
Walther von der Vogelweide Schloss.
Biterolf Wächter.
Heinrich der Schreiber Gurth.
Reimar von Zweter Risse.
Elizabeth, Niece of the Landgrave Fräulein Johanna Wagner.
Venus Mme. Schroeder-Devrient.
A Young Shepherd Fräulein Thiele.

Weimar, 1849; Schwerin and Breslau, Freiburg and Wiesbaden, 1852; Königsberg, Hamburg, Darmstadt, Elbing, Cassel, Frankfort, Posen, Leipsic, Riga, Barmen, Bremen, Bromberg, Cologne, Danzig, Düsseldorf, Prague, and Stralsund, 1853; Wolfendbüttel, Rostock, Reval, Neisse, Magdeburg, Glogau, Mayence, Gumbinnen, Gratz, Aix-la-Chapelle, Augsburg, and Stettin, 1854; Strassburg, Lübeck, Coburg, Bamberg, Munich, Mannheim, Antwerp, Zurich, Würzburg, Carlsruhe, Hanover, 1855; Berlin, 1856; Vienna, Dessau, and Sondershausen, 1857; Stuttgart, 1859; New York, April 4, 1859; Rotterdam, 1860; Paris, 1861; Brunswick, 1861; Olmütz and Amsterdam, 1862; Munich, Paris version, 1867; The Hague, 1870; Budapesth, 1871; Bologna, 1872; Brussels, 1873; Lucerne, 1874; Copenhagen, 1875; London (Italian), May 6, 1876; New York (Italian) and Moscow, 1877; Trieste, 1878; Innspruck and Salzburg, 1880; Ghent and London (English), 1881.

First performed in America at the Stadt Theater, New York, April 4, 1859.

_Cast._

Hermann Graff.
Tannhäuser Pickaneser.
Wolfram Lehmann.
Walther Lotti.
Biterolf Urchs.
Heinrich der Schreiber Bolten.
Reimar von Zweter Brandt.
Elizabeth Mme. Siedenburg.
Venus Mme. Pickaneser.
Shepherd (Not given).

Conductor, Carl Bergmann.

TANNHÄUSER

With "Tannhäuser" we enter upon what may fairly be called the transition period of the genius of Wagner. While in certain passages this work is quite as much indebted to older opera as "Der Fliegende Holländer," and in others falls into a cheap and tawdry style of melody quite unworthy of its composer, it nevertheless contains parts which rise to heights never before attained except perhaps in Beethoven's "Fidelio." The book will especially repay study, for in it we find the first complete demonstration of Wagner's powers as a dramatist and a dramatic poet. His skilful weaving of the dramatic web out of materials scattered and apparently unrelated places him among the masters of theatrical writing. It will be our pleasure first to examine the sources of the drama and the manner in which Wagner employed them.

"Tannhäuser" was first conceived by Wagner in 1841, and the scenic sketches, with the provisional title "Venusberg, Romantic Opera," were made in 1842. The poem was finished on May 22, 1843. Owing to his being occupied with the preparations for the production of "Der Fliegende Holländer" and with other matters, Wagner did not complete the score till April 13, 1845. When the work was in preparation for performance at the Paris Grand Opéra in 1861, Wagner rewrote some portion of the score. The reader will recall that the members of the Jockey Club demanded their usual terpsichorean titbit, but that Wagner would not consent to write an ordinary ballet and thrust it into his drama at a certain hour. He insisted that the ballet should take its proper place in the dramatic scheme and that it should have a meaning.

He accordingly wrote a new and careful elaboration of the scene in the Venusberg at the opening of Act I. In the first, or Dresden, version of the work the overture is a complete number, and as such is frequently heard on the concert platform. In the Parisian version the overture does not come to an end, but at the second appearance of the bacchanalian music the curtain rises and the ballet begins. It is descriptive of the revels of the realm of Venus--"a wild and yet seductive chaos of movements and groupings, of soft delight, of yearning and burning, carried to the most delicious pitch of frenzied riot."[34] He then extended the dialogue between Venus and Tannhäuser to a scene of considerable dimensions, its chief purpose being a further revelation of the character of Venus. Undoubtedly this Parisian version was nearer to Wagner's heart than his first one, but its music does not well bear critical examination, for the style of the added part is that of the "Tristan" period, while the old "Tannhäuser" music is of a much more primitive sort.

[Footnote 34: Wagner, "On the Performing of Tannhäuser," Prose Works, Ellis, Vol. III.]

So much for the writing of the opera. It is a curious fact that Wagner has recorded as his sources of inspiration a book which cannot be found and a condition which did not exist. He says that while "Rienzi" was in preparation at Dresden, the German "Volksbuch" of "Tannhäuser" fell into his hands. Now no one has ever been able to find such a book, and learned authorities declare that there never was one. But Wagner further says that he had made the acquaintance of Tannhäuser in Tieck's narrative, which he now reread. He read also the "Tannhäuserlied." He says: "What most irresistibly attracted me was the connection, however loose, between Tannhäuser and the 'Singer's Tourney in the Wartburg,' which I found established in that Folk's book." With this second subject he had already made some acquaintance in a tale of Hoffmann, and he now decided to read the mediæval epic, "The Sängerkrieg." There is no connection at all between the incidents of the old Tannhäuser legend and "The Sängerkrieg." This is a condition which Wagner himself created, and his error in supposing that he had discovered it in the legend is an amusing instance of the occasional inability of genius to analyse its own workings. What Wagner did was to accept Lucas's identification of Tannhäuser with one of the personages in the epic, thus bringing the two stories together, as we shall presently see.

The legend of Tannhäuser is found in old folk tales, mostly in the popular form of ballads. An English translation of one of these, printed with the original music in Böhme's "Altdeutsches Liederbuch," is reproduced in Jessie Weston's excellent work, "Legends of the Wagner Drama." The story contained in this is that Tannhäuser, a knight, has spent much time in the cave of Venus, but has grown weary and would depart. Venus tells him that he has sworn a solemn oath with her "for aye to dwell." He denies that he has so sworn. She offers him her fairest maid as wife if he will stay, but he declines, saying,

"Nay, an I took another wife,
I here bethink me well,
My lot for all eternity
Would be the flames of hell."

Venus still pleads with him and bids him think upon her charms and the joys of life in the Venusberg. He declares that his "life is waxen sick and faint," and again begs for leave to go. Finally he calls upon the Virgin to aid him. Then Venus tells him to go, but adds that wherever he goes he shall sing her praise. He departs, and determines to seek Pope Urban at Rome and ask absolution. The Pope, who holds in his hand a withered staff, says:

"This staff shall bud and bloom again
Ere grace to thee be shown."

Tannhäuser in despair returns to the arms of Venus. On the third day after his departure from Rome the staff buds and blossoms. The Pope seeks for Tannhäuser, but it is too late; he has returned to his sin, and for this Pope Urban's soul is to be counted lost on the Judgment Day.

There is absolutely nothing in that story to suggest any connection with the contest of minnesingers in the Castle of Wartburg in 1204 A.D., the year in which Wolfram von Eschenbach is known to have been the guest of Hermann, Landgrave of Thuringia. This contest is described in the poem, or collection of poems called the "Wartburgkrieg," which dates from the 13th century and gives us an interesting view of the Court of Hermann of Thuringia. It is not certain that all of this poem has come down to us, nor do we know who wrote it. Simrock, the German editor of the work, believed that its earliest part was written about 1233. Some verses, believed to have been by Walther von der Vogelweide, appear in the work. The latest part of it probably dates from 1287.

The poem contains no such contest in song as that which takes place in the second act of Wagner's drama, but it does describe a debate as to the glories of certain princes. Heinrich von Ofterdingen, Heinrich der Schreiber, Walther von der Vogelweide, Biterolf, and Reimar von Zweter take part in the discussion, while Wolfram von Eschenbach, the famous author of "Parzival," is the umpire. It was in reading this poem that Wagner's attention was called to Wolfram and his works, and thus he discovered the legendary world of "Lohengrin" and "Parsifal." The "Wartburgkrieg" contains other matter, but that just summarised is all that Wagner found for his "Tannhäuser." He got from the mediæval epic the atmosphere of Hermann's Court, for this potentate was famous in his day as a patron of poetry and an encourager of the art of the knightly minnesinger. He obtained also the idea of the contest of song--which in history was rather one of poetry--and the names of the historical minnesingers. In adopting this material to his dramatic purpose Wagner omitted Heinrich of Ofterdingen and substituted Tannhäuser for him. He furthermore changed the subject of the controversy.

Whence came the lovely character, one of the noblest of all Wagner's heroines, Elizabeth, the Landgrave's niece? She is not to be found in the Tannhäuser legend nor in the "Wartburgkrieg." It is altogether certain that Wagner found the suggestion for this beautiful character in the story of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, the daughter-in-law of Hermann of Thuringia. She was affianced in childhood to the Landgrave's eldest son Ludwig; and when married the pair led a rigorously monastic life and devoted themselves to holiness. Ludwig died young and his brother Heinrich was harsh to Elizabeth. The pure and lofty stature of this saintly princess furnished Wagner with the personality which he needed as the element of opposition to the baneful influence of Venus.

We have now before us the sources from which Wagner drew the materials for this noble drama. Let us see how he utilised his matter. In the first scene we behold Tannhäuser in the arms of Venus, sick and weary of sensual delight and eager to return to the smell of the green grass and the song of birds, and still more to the rhythmic alternation of pain and pleasure which makes the song of human life. His senses are nauseated with their own ceaseless gratification. Who, then, is this Venus, and what is she doing in the subterranean world of the 12th century? She is plainly the Venus of Roman mythology, the Aphrodite of the Greeks, the Astarte of the Phoenicians. The atmosphere which surrounds her is that of the classic Venus. She is further identified by the pictures of Leda and the Swan and Europa and the Bull, taken from classic fable and illustrating stratagems of the passion over which Venus presided. Before the Romans pushed their way into Germany, the old Teutonic mythology had its goddess Freya, the wife of Odin, queen and leader of the Valkyrs. But the Scandinavian myth made Frigg, or Fricka, the queen, and Freya the second in rank. She was the goddess of love and beauty. The South German races confounded the two and added qualities not known in the northern mythology. They made Freya coincident on one side with Hel, the goddess of the underworld and of the dead, and on the other with Holda, the goddess of the spring, of budding and fructification. Thus when the Romans carried their mythology into Germany it was not at all extraordinary that the attributes of Freya and Venus should have become mingled in the minds of the people.

These simple-minded people did not readily part with their poetic mythology when Christianity mastered their hearts. The old deities were supposed to have retired into caves or mountains, there to dwell till recalled to activity. Venus, according to various traditions, lived in more than one cave, but her favourite abode was the Hörselberg in Thuringia. The propinquity of this cave to the Castle of Wartburg naturally led Wagner to choose it as the scene of Tannhäuser's retirement. In the drama the knight's feelings and desires are precisely the same as those of the hero of the old legend. Wagner adds the beautiful poetic touches of his yearning to hear the song of birds and once more to suffer pain. Furthermore he makes it clear to us that the Venus of his imagination was not without womanly feeling, and that her passion for Tannhäuser was a very real one. She scornfully gives him leave to go, but it is finally his despairing cry to the Virgin for aid which acts as a charm to remove the spell of enchantment. He instantly finds himself in the valley before the Wartburg, and hears the tinkling of sheep-bells, while a young shepherd carols a lay to the May and to Holda, the representative of the beneficent side of the evil goddess just left. It is in such details of fancy as these that Wagner demonstrates his right to consider himself a poet.

With the disappearance of the red and glittering cave of Venus and the appearance of the cool, fresh greens of the landscape--a striking pictorial contrast, full of theatrical effectiveness, and showing Wagner's employment of the combined arts of poetry, music, painting, and action in the new dramatic form--we enter the domain of the "Wartburgkrieg." The Tannhäuser of the old legend steps into the shoes of Heinrich of Ofterdingen. The adventure which has befallen him is not unsuited to his character, for the real Tannhäuser was a bit of a Don Juan and had many "affairs." It seems that he repented and became a wiser and a better man in later life. In the ballad Venus foretold that he would sing her praises wherever he went, but in the drama this prediction is made by Tannhäuser in the first scene. That Wagner had a purpose in the change is shown by Tannhäuser's outbreak in the hall of song. Efforts have been made to prove that Heinrich of Ofterdingen and Tannhäuser were one and the same person, for the existence of the former is problematical, and also to prove that Tannhäuser did really visit the Court of Hermann. Neither has been established as a fact. The matter is of little importance to us. The personages in the song contest, except Tannhäuser, are historical, and Wagner has been faithful in his representation of their characters. He has chosen for dramatic purposes to accentuate the poetic side of Wolfram's character. Wolfram was celebrated as a champion of Christianity, and was an ardent advocate of nobility of heart in woman in preference to merely external beauty. In the very beginning of his "Parzival" he says:

"Many women are praised for beauty; if at heart they shall be untrue,
Then I praise them as I would praise it, the glass of a sapphire hue,
That in gold shall be set as a jewel! Tho' I hold it an evil thing,
If a man take a costly ruby, with the virtue the stone doth bring,
And set it in a worthless setting: I would liken such a costly stone
To the heart of a faithful woman, who true womanhood doth own.
I would look not upon her colour, nor the heart's roof all can see;
If the heart beateth true beneath it, true praise shall she win
from me."[35]

[Footnote 35: "Parzival," a knightly epic, by Wolfram von Eschenbach. Translation by Jessie L. Weston. London, David Nutt.]

In the hall of song the contest is on a similar theme, and Wolfram was well chosen by Wagner to oppose the passionate ideas of the wandering Tannhäuser. Walther von der Vogelweide has little importance in Wagner's "Tannhäuser," but is mentioned again in "Die Meistersinger," when young Walther von Stolzing claims him as master. Vogelweide was a poet of renown in his day, a contemporary of Wolfram, a Tyrolean by birth and a lyric singer. He was a man of station and had an estate near Würzburg, where he was buried. Reimar was also a notable poet in his day, but of Biterolf little is known except that there was such a man.

These are the personages who greet Tannhäuser when Wagner's wonderful transformation scene has closed, when the effect of the beautiful pictorial change has died away, and the solemn strains of the pilgrims' chorus, so gently beneficent after the passionate witcheries of the wild bacchanal, have melted into the distance. And with the advent of these historic figures there begins the operation of the elevating principle of the drama, the influence of Elizabeth. With their simple and yet aspiring spirits they furnish a beautiful contrast to the carnal creatures whom we have just left in the Hörselberg. The latter typified the gratification of the senses, while these are an expression of the higher desires of man, presently to be shown to us in their loftiest embodiment, the eternal woman-soul, which "leadeth us ever upward and on."

In the experience of Tannhäuser Wagner has set before us the struggle of the pure and the impure, the lusts and the aspirations of man's nature. It is essentially the tragedy of the man. We may try as we please to exalt the importance of Elizabeth as a dramatic character, but the truth is that she is merely the embodiment of a force. Tannhäuser is typical of his sex, beset on the one hand by the desire of the flesh, which satiates and maddens, and courted on the other by the undying loveliness of chaste and holy love. If ever a sermon was preached as to the certainty with which the sins of the flesh will find a man out it is preached in the second act of this tremendous tragedy, when the flame of old passions sears the front of new happiness and drives the errant out of paradise.

Here Wagner has risen far above his material. In the pomp and circumstance of the mediæval contest of song he has displayed active fancy, for the scene as presented is his rather than history's. In the culmination of the catastrophe he has wrought with the craft of genius, for in the period of which he wrote the yielding of a man to sensual temptation would never have caused such a stir. Tannhäuser would have been damned rather for worshipping a heathen goddess, an enemy of the Christian Church, than for slumbering in the soft embraces of a wanton. Hence, though struck to the heart by more than mortal wound, Elizabeth thinks first of her lover's sin:

"Was liegt an mir? Doch er--sein Heil!
Wollt Ihr sein ewig Heil ihm rauben?"

"What matters it for me? But he--his salvation! Would you rob him of his eternal salvation?" With this beautiful plea of the stricken Elizabeth Wagner shows how perfectly he understood the tragic elements of his story, for he makes the saving principle again, as in "Der Fliegende Holländer," one of self-effacement, a love faithful unto death.

In the final act Elizabeth, her last hope of the return of Tannhäuser gone, consecrates her soul to heaven, relinquishes the desire of life, and ascends to her last home. Wolfram, who has loved her, and who thus becomes, in his self-sacrifice, a foil to the passionate and self-gratifying Tannhäuser, sits at the foot of the Hörselberg and philosophises to the evening star. Tannhäuser returns, cursed by Rome, and plunged in despair. His narrative is the climax of power in the opera, one of the most intensely tragic pieces of writing in all dramatic literature. His senses reel; the old world of lusts and passions opens the portals of its rosy dreamland, and the songs of its sirens again lure him back to the arms of Venus and bury the newly awakened soul in the depths of sensual debauchery. But no; the eternal feminine still strives to save. The sainted Elizabeth, dead, is yet the guardian angel of this poor wanderer, and as her funeral bier is laid before him he sinks beside it with the last unutterably pathetic supplication of a still repentant spirit:

"Heilige Elizabeth, bitte für mich!"

"Holy Elizabeth, pray for me." And Wolfram pronounces the benediction in the words, "Er ist erlöst" ("he is redeemed"). The sprouting staff of the Pope, which has followed him from Rome, is laid upon his dead body, and the solemn chorus of the pilgrims chant the entrance of his purified spirit into its eternal rest. Thus did Wagner, out of the simple and unrelated materials of the old Tannhäuser myth and the "Wartburgkrieg," fashion the tragedy of a man's soul. Women never find in "Tannhäuser" all that a man finds there. The experience of the story lies beyond the pale of the feminine nature, but every man must bow his head in reverence to the genius which thus made quick the battle of passion against purity for the possession of the masculine soul. Wagner wrote no mightier tragedy than this.[36]

[Footnote 36: It is worthy of note that in 1863 there was printed in Mobile, Ala., a long blank-verse poem, entitled "Tannhäuser; or, The Battle of the Bards," by Neville Temple and Edward Trevor. This was a paraphrase--and in some places a translation--of Wagner's opera book. It was written by two young men in the English civil service in Germany and sent over to America by a friend. It transpired that "Edward Trevor" was no less a personage than Robert, Lord Lytton, better known as Owen Meredith, author of "Lucile."]

The music of "Tannhäuser" commands less admiration than the book. Some of it is worthy of the mature Wagner, but much is trivial and some is positively weak and puerile. Wagner had not yet grasped a new conception of the lyric drama; he had thus far only enlarged and extended the old one. He was not yet ready to set aside all the old formulæ; but he was striving to give them a new significance. Hence in "Tannhäuser" there are passages of a familiar operatic cut, such as the scene of Tannhäuser and the courtiers in the first act, ending with the finale of that act, the duet between Tannhäuser and Elizabeth in Act II., and Wolfram's address to the evening star in