Life of Richard Wagner. Louis Nohl
he wished to appropriate the poem for himself, or rather for another composer. In order therefore not to lose everything, Wagner sold the copyright for Paris for 500 francs and it soon after appeared as “Vaisseau Phantome.” It naturally followed that for the present his most urgent task was to complete the work for himself and in his own way. The performance of the “Freischuetz” had increased his ambition and his other experiences had completely disgusted him with the modern Babylon. The romance – for such it was – was soon finished. He had allowed a beautiful myth simply to tell its own story and had avoided all the nonsense of the opera with its finales, duets, and ballets, wishing simply to reveal to his countrymen once more the divine attributes of the soul. But now that the romance was to be set to music he feared that his art might have deserted him, so long had it remained unused. However the work progressed rapidly enough. He had in his mind as the main motive of the work, Senta’s ballad, and around it clustered at once the whole musical arrangement of the material. The Sailor’s Chorus and the Spinning Song were popular melodies, for the “Freischuetz” continually kept them humming in his ears. In seven weeks the work was completed, with the exception of the overture, which every day’s pressing wants retarded for a few weeks longer.
Leipzig and Munich promptly declined the work with which he had proposed to salute his fatherland once more. The latter city declared that the opera was not adapted to Germany! Through Meyerbeer’s influence it was then accepted in Berlin. Thus hated Paris led to the production of two works in which he touched strings that find their fullest response only in a German’s heart. The prospect of returning to his fatherland delighted him. What could be more natural than that his mind strove to study more and more closely the spirit and development of his fatherland, in order to raise other and better monuments to it? He renewed his studies in German history, although solely for the purpose of finding suitable material for operas. At first, Manfred and the brilliant era of the Hohenstauffens attracted him. But this historic world at once and utterly disappeared when he beheld that figure in which the spirit of the Ghibellines attained in human form its highest development and greatest beauty —Tannhaeuser! His previous readings in German literature had made him familiar with the story, but he now for the first time understood it. The simple popular tale stirred him to such a degree that his whole soul was filled with the image of its hero. It revealed the path to the historic depths of our folk-lore to which Beethoven’s and Weber’s music had long since given him the clues. The story had some connection with the “Saengerkrieg auf Wartburg,” and in this contest, he saw at once the possibility of fully revealing the qualities of his hero, who raises the first German protest against the pretended culture and sham morality of the Latin world. The old poem of this “Saengerkrieg,” is further connected with the legend of Lohengrin. Thus it was that in foreign Paris he was destined to gain at once and permanently a realization of the native qualities of our common nature, which, from primeval times, the German spirit has put into these legends.
After a stay of more than three years abroad, he left Paris, April 7, 1842. “For the first time I saw the Rhine; with tears in my eyes, I, a poor artist, swore to be ever loyal to my German fatherland,” he says. Have we not seen that this “poor artist” with the might of his magic wand has created a world of new life, and what is far more, has aroused the genius of his people, aye, the very soul of mankind, and has led his epoch and his nation to the achievement of new and permanent intellectual results?
We now come to his first efforts towards the accomplishment of such results. They were to cost hard labor, anxiety, struggles, and pain of every kind indeed, but they were done and they stand to-day.
III
1842-1849
REVOLUTION IN LIFE AND ART
“Give me a place to stand.”
In an enthusiastic account of the first presentation of the “Flying Dutchman” in Riga, May, 1843, it is said: “The ‘Flying Dutchman’ is a signal of hope that we shall soon be rescued from this wild wandering in the strange seas of foreign music and shall find once more our blessed home.” In a similar strain, the Illustrierte Zeitung said: “It is the duty of all who really cherish native art to announce to the fatherland the appearance of a man of such promise as Wagner.” Indeed Wagner himself says that the success of the work was an important indication that we need but write “as our native sense suggests.” That he himself perceived a new era of the highest and purest outpouring of a new spirit is shown in the composition of this year (1843), the “Liebesmahl der Apostel,” wherein he quotes from the Bible: “Be of good cheer for I am near you and My spirit is with you.” A chorus of forty male voices exultingly proclaimed this promise from the high church choir loft in Dresden, on the occasion of the Maennergesangvereins-Fest.
“Rienzi” was performed in October 1842, and the “Flying Dutchman” January 2, 1843, both meeting with an enthusiastic reception. Wagner himself had conducted the rehearsals and secured the support of newly won friends and such eminent artists as Schroeder-Devrient and Tichatschek. His success gained for him the distinction of Hofkapellmeister to the Saxon Court. The position once held by Weber was now his. The objects which he had sought to accomplish seemed within reach and he heartily entered into the brilliant art life of the city, the more so as hitherto he had not enjoyed it though possessing the desire and knowledge to do so. Although “Rienzi” retained a certain degree of popularity, the “Flying Dutchman” however had not really been understood, and the more it was heard, the less was it appreciated. How could it be otherwise amid such a public as then existed in Germany? In the upper and middle classes French novels were the favorite literature, while the stage was controlled by French and Italian operas. With all their superficiality they combined perfection in the art of singing, but failed to awaken any sense of the intrinsic worth of our own nature. There were but few of sufficiently delicate feeling to perceive in this composition the continuation of the noble aims of Mozart, Beethoven, and Weber. Wagner himself while in Dresden was destined to continue the struggle against all that was foreign as these three masters had done before him. “Professional musicians admitted my poetic talent, poets conceded that I possessed musical capacity,” is the way he characterizes the prevailing misunderstanding of his endeavors and his works, which required a generation to overcome.
He constantly sought to direct public attention to the grander and nobler compositions, such as Gluck’s “Armide” and “Iphigenia in Aulis,” Weber’s “Euryanthe” and “Freischuetz,” Marschner’s “Hans Heiling,” Spohr’s “Jessonda,” and other grand works for concerts, like Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony” and Bach’s “Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied,” all of which were performed in a masterly manner, while such compositions as Spontini’s “Vestalin” he at least helped to display in the best light. He was also very active in having Weber’s remains brought from London. He not only composed a funeral march, for the obsequies, upon motives from “Euryanthe,” which was very powerful in effect, but he also has reminded posterity of what it possesses in this the youngest German master of the musical stage. “No musician, more thoroughly German than thou, has ever lived,” he said at the grave. “See, now the Briton does thee justice, the Frenchman admires thee, but the German alone can love thee. Thou art his, a beautiful day in his life, a warm drop of his blood, a part of his heart.” Thus at times he succeeded in arousing the public. But on the whole, his ideas were not accepted, and it retained its accustomed views and continued in the old pleasures. Wagner began again to feel more and more his isolated position. The complete misunderstanding of Tannhaeuser, which he began to write when he first arrived in Dresden, and the refusals of the work by other cities, Berlin among them, declaring it “too epic,” rendered this sense of isolation complete. The recurrence of such experiences as these showed him how far his art was still removed from its ideal and his contemporaries from the comprehension of their