Richard Wagner, Composer of Operas. John F. Runciman
than to think the two great composers capable of writing the kind of academic stuff which looks like music on paper and when played sounds like anything you like excepting music. He saw that when an orchestra carelessly romped through a movement, paying no heed to expression, to nuances of colour, to tempi, it did not really play, interpret, the music; and soon his convictions bore very remarkable fruit.
At the theatre he learnt the final lesson needed to prepare him for writing operas of his own. Masaniello in its way opened his eyes as much as Beethoven's symphonies had done. Not only the bustle, but the clean sweep of the thing from beginning to finish of each act, with brilliant climaxes in the finales, made him stare and gasp in amazement. Weber he admired; but Weber's power lay in the beauty and picturesqueness of his music: in Masaniello the music made its effect because of the theatrical skill with which it was used. The same thing he felt in William Tell. These two men, Auber and Rossini, were masters of the art of writing effectively for the theatre. The drama of their operas was not particularly striking nor lofty, the music did not come near Beethoven's, Mozart's, nor even Weber's in beauty, but their mastery in writing theatre-music carried them through triumphantly. The problem was, then, to acquire their skill and use it for a high and noble purpose; and this Richard at once attempted to do. He planned and wrote the words of Die Hochzeit. He laid it aside because Rosalie disliked the plot; but immediately he proceeded to another opera, Die Feen, which he completed at Würzburg. The book of Die Hochzeit is dated December 5, 1832, Leipzig. On January 10 of the following year his symphony was given; on the 12th he replied to his brother Albert—now singer, actor and stage-manager at the Würzburg theatre—accepting an invitation to stay with him; a few days later he set out, reaching his destination towards the end of the month.
III
Wagner had scarcely time to look around him before his brother Albert offered him the post of chorus-master. The salary was magnificent—£1 (of our money) per month for about six months in the year; the work was hard. We need only note with regard to it that he here heard, and in the process of drilling his choristers undoubtedly got to know very well, all the popular successes of the day. His own account is that he liked them; and it is significant that during this period he heard Meyerbeer's Robert the Devil. At the moment it does not seem to have affected his compositions; but in a very few years Meyerbeer's example, if not his music, had a most marked influence in shaping his career. For the present he worked at Die Feen, and as soon as the theatre closed and Albert and his wife went elsewhere to perform in the off-season—just as German, French, Italian and American singers come to Covent Garden now during the summer—he had plenty of time. By New Year's day of '34 the work was complete. Parts of it were rendered by some Music Union; but soon Richard left Würzburg, having gained much experience if not any money. He was offered a post at Zurich; but though that town was destined to be his home for years long afterwards, it evidently did not tempt him then, for he returned to Leipzig.
Here at once began one of those squalid intrigues which drive serious opera-composers crazy. Several of Richard's pieces had been played; he had occupied one responsible position and been asked to take another; he had the finished score of his opera; and he was young and by nature sanguine to the verge of lunacy. He thought he had only to call on the Intendant of the opera with his masterpiece and its production would be assured. He did call, and soon he received a promise that his work would be done. But Leipzig was now Mendelssohn's stronghold and no rival could be tolerated. One of the great man's friends and admirers, Hauser, determined that the work should not be done. He opined that Wagner did not know how to compose nor how to orchestrate; he found the music lacking in warmth. This from a worshipper of Mendelssohn seems a little amusing to-day; but it had a result bad for Wagner in 1834. Underground work went on; and while Wagner waited with what patience he could muster—and I expect that was not much—hoping every day to hear that rehearsals had commenced, his score was quietly put on the shelf. This experience falls to the lot of every writer of operas and is so commonplace an incident that I should do no more than barely mention it did not many followers of Wagner see in it the beginning of that "persecution by the Jews" of which we heard so much a few years ago. It appears to me nothing of the kind. The Jews did not at that date particularly single out Wagner for attack: merely they defended their vested interests exactly as the musical profession in England defended and still defends its vested interests. It should be remembered that he had quite as many friends as enemies amongst the Hebrews; and I never could understand how, to mention only two, two great conductors and intimates of Wagner, Mottl and Levi, could tolerate all the nonsense talked on the subject at Bayreuth. When Brendel published the notorious Judaism in Music it is true many Jewish journalists began to libel Wagner: it is true also that some Jewish professors in the Leipzig conservatoire petitioned that Brendel should be dismissed; but these were the shabby acts of individuals, and far too many shabby acts were perpetrated by Richard's partisans for it to be desirable for them to raise the cry of persecution. Perforce I must say a few words more on this disagreeable topic when I come to deal with the Meyerbeer-Rienzi episode; but I promise the reader to cut it as short as may be. Once for all, despite all protestations, despite Wagner's honest belief to the contrary, I dismiss the Jewish conspiracy theory as rubbish.
Richard's health was in no way injured by the breakdown of the negotiations. His letters of the period are as buoyant as could be wished. He had other schemes. At the Freemasons' concerts his Die Feen overture made a hit. He heard Schröder-Devrient in Bellini's Montechi e Capuleti, and found to his astonishment that a great singer could create great artistic effects in music of no very high value. He had many friends, and amongst them Schumann and Heinrich Laube—the latter a free-thinking journalist whose utterances so scared the government-by-police, as tending to make people think for themselves instead of peacefully submitting to be governed, that he was put in prison. He was editor of a paper called the Zeitung für die Elegante Welt— a curious title for a journal which frequently praised the democratic Richard. In the summer of 1834 he went for another holiday, this time to Teplitz, where he sketched Das Liebesverbot, his second opera to get finished and the first to be performed—performed, by the way, in a very unusual fashion. Obviously his spirits were not damped: obviously, also, the family which is supposed not to have assisted him assisted him to the extent, at any rate, of enabling him to take a holiday he could not pay for. He had as yet not earned sufficient for his travelling expenses from Leipzig to Würzburg and back, to say nothing of holiday trips. As on this trip he planned Das Liebesverbot his thanks were due to his family for being able to begin that work. It is true he had Apel as a friend, but he had not yet formed the habit of borrowing right and left, nor is there any hint in his correspondence of Apel having paid his expenses.
I wish now to pass rapidly over two fresh adventures—the conductorship at Magdeburg and that at Königsberg; but first let me point out how the boy's was changing to a man's character. It is plain that he worked very hard at Würzburg, for the score of Die Feen is a big one, and teaching his chorus must have occupied many hours a day. It is equally plain that he set to work with the greatest vigour on the new opera. Now, Nietzsche declared that Wagner by sheer will and energy "made himself a musician." That is pure nonsense; but it points to an important characteristic—namely, Wagner did not, even at the age of twenty, trust to inspiration alone, as with his hot and impulsive nature we might have expected, but also to unremitting work. For the remaining fifty years of his life the labours of each day were almost incredible.
IV
At this point the reader must be asked to bear in mind that the operatic companies with which Wagner was connected in these early days—until he left Riga in 1839 and set sail for Paris via London—were unlike anything in existence to-day. Dickens in Nicholas Nickleby and Thackeray in Pendennis gave us pictures of the old stock theatrical companies, with all their good-fellowship, jealous rivalries, lack of romance and understanding of the dramatic art, and abundance