FOREWORD
Beethoven, in Wagner's estimation, is a landmark in music, just as Shakespeare is in literature, as Jesus or Buddha in religion. He is the central figure; all others are but radii emanating from him. To Beethoven was it given to express clearly what the others could but dimly perceive. The relation of men like Bach or Händel toward Beethoven, Wagner held to be analogous to that of the prophets toward Jesus, namely, one of expectancy. The art reached its culmination in Beethoven. This is Wagner's summary of the significance of Beethoven's work, and he proclaimed it continually, from the housetops. It was in some sort a religious exercise to him to make propaganda for the master to whom he felt himself so deeply indebted. The burden of his utterances on the subject of the musician's art is, "A greater than I exists. It is Beethoven."
Chiefly, perhaps, of the philosopher and the poet must we needs feel that if any genius reaches out into an interpenetrating spiritual world, theirs must do so.
—F.W.H. Myers, Human Personality, Chapter on Genius.
In art the best of all is too spiritual to be given directly to the senses; it must be born in the imagination of the beholder, although begotten by the work of art.
—Schopenhauer.
agner's achievement can be attributed, in part, to a certain quality of intellectual receptivity, by virtue of which he was enabled to appropriate to himself the genius of two of his predecessors for whom he had a special affinity. His epoch-making work was rendered possible through Shakespeare and Beethoven, who served him as models all his life.
Every great achievement is referable to some preceding one often quite as great but more obscure. No man stands alone in his deed. The doer of every great work has been helped thereto by his predecessors working the same soil. The greater the performance, the more prominently this comes out sometimes, as in the case of Shakespeare whose indebtedness to Christopher Marlowe and others will at once come to mind.
To Beethoven and to Shakespeare, Wagner paid tribute on all occasions. Especially is this true in his relation to Beethoven, to whom he readily yields the palm in the realm of music. In the eight volumes of his Gesammelte Schriften, no single fact stands out more clearly than his recognition of Beethoven as his chief, his master, from whom proceeds all wisdom and knowledge and truth. One can hardly read any of Wagner's prose writings without seeing how readily he falls into the place of disciple of Beethoven. "I knew no other pleasure," he says in A Pilgrimage to Beethoven, "than to plunge so deeply into his genius that at last I fancied myself become a portion thereof." The Pilgrimage, though an imaginative work, is the medium he employed to give utterance to his regard for Beethoven. His letters to musical friends, to Liszt, to Fischer, especially those to Ulig, are filled with praise of the older master. In a letter to Meyerbeer, in 1887, he states how he came to be a musician. "A passionate admiration of Beethoven impelled me to this step." The only one who was good enough in Wagner's eyes to be compared with Beethoven, was Shakespeare. These two names are frequently brought into juxtaposition in his works. No musician is worthy of comparison with his demigod. "Mozart died when he was just piercing into the mystery. Beethoven was the first to enter in," he says in his Sketches. As if even this praise were too great, he severely criticises Mozart's operas and symphonies elsewhere.
The deferential attitude which Wagner assumes toward Beethoven is not accorded any other musician. Consciously or not, when he talks about other musicians (except Bach) he, for the most part, assumes the rôle of censor. But Beethoven comes in for unstinted praise. "It is impossible," he says, "to discuss the essential nature of Beethoven's music without at once falling into the tone of rhapsody."
Wagner seems hardly to have been able, when writing about music, to refrain from mention of Beethoven, he is so full of the subject. It has a bearing on every important event in his life. At the ceremonies attending the laying of the foundation-stone of the Festival Play House at Bayreuth, the Ninth Symphony was performed, and in a little speech he says: "I wish to see the Ninth Symphony regarded as the foundation-stone of my own artistic structure." In "Religion and Art" we find these words: "to whom the unspeakable bliss has been vouchsafed of taking one of the last four symphonies of Beethoven into his heart and soul."
Many enthusiasts have worked in Wagner's cause from Liszt down, but none have equalled Wagner in this respect—in enthusiasm for his master. He pays tribute to Beethoven in all conceivable places. He first heard of him when told of his death. His first acquaintance with Beethoven's music was a year after the master's death, on his arrival at Leipzig at the Gewandhaus concerts. Wagner was then in his sixteenth year. "Its impression on me was overpowering," he says. "The music to his Egmont so inspired me that I determined not to allow my own completed tragedy to be launched until provided with such like music. Without the slightest diffidence I believed that I could write this needful music." He had up to this time no special leaning toward music. He had not previously entertained a thought of it as a career, but his first hearing of Beethoven's music decided him to adopt it, such was the kinship between these two minds. Through Beethoven he discovered that "music," to use his own words, "is a new language in which that which is boundless can express itself with a certainty impossible to be misunderstood."[G]
[G] Thoreau, in 1840, expressed himself similarly. We quote from the recently published Service. "Music is a language, a mother tongue, a more mellifluous and articulate language than words, in comparison with which speech is recent and temporary. There is as much music in the world as virtue. In a world of peace and love music would be the universal language and men greet each other in the fields in such accents as a Beethoven now utters at rare intervals at a distance."
The episode made a turning-point in his life. Hitherto his whole mind and thought had been placed on literature, the drama in particular, as a career. Through Beethoven he first learned what a power music possesses in the portrayal of the emotions and passions. He had, as he says, an intimate love and knowledge of Mozart without apparently being much influenced thereby. Up to this time Shakespeare had been his archetype. Now, with a fine discriminating intelligence, marvellous in a youth of sixteen, Beethoven is to be included in this hero-worship, and is eventually to supplant his former ideal. "It was Beethoven who opened up the boundless faculty of instrumental music for expressing elemental storm and stress," he says in the "Art-Work of the Future," and elsewhere in the same article, "the deed of the one and only Shakespeare, which made of him a universal man, a very god, is yet but the kindred deed of the solitary Beethoven, who found the language of the artist-manhood of the future."
Wagner's criticisms on music are admirable. Here he expresses his thoughts as plainly as in his compositions. His disquisitions on music as an art and on Beethoven in particular, are always lucid and forcible. He may be misty in his philosophical speculations, but when he speaks on music it is in the authoritative tone of the master, familiar with every phase of his subject. He always contributes something of value, and his thoughts are an illumination.
Had Wagner never written a line of music, had he elected to be a literary man, a poet, a dramatist, philosopher, his fame to-day would still be world-wide. Had he confined his genius into this one channel of literary expression, as was his original intention, with his mental equipment, and a Napoleonic ambition that balked at nothing, the product would have been as original and extraordinary, we may be sure, as is his art-product in music. Wagner, the musician, is so commanding a figure that the literary man is obscured; but when we consider the magnitude of his literary achievement, the dramas Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Flying Dutchman, Tristan, Parsifal, the stupendous Ring of the Nibelung, the essays on music, philosophy, criticism and sociology, and reflect that it is, so to speak, a by-product, it becomes apparent that, had he made literature his chief aim in life, the result would have been notable in the annals of the century.
Wagner seriously contemplated writing a biography of Beethoven at one time, and devoted several months to collecting materials for it. But his finances were still in bad shape, and he was unable to undertake it without an order from some publisher, who would have been required to advance money. He was unable to find such a party, and the project was abandoned, most unfortunately, as he would have made a valuable contribution to the subject. The short biographical sketch he wrote on Beethoven on the centenary anniversary of the master's birth, shows marvellous insight, especially in relation to the critical and analytical parts of it. This work, instinct with worship of the master, is a product of Wagner's mature years. Here, as in his earliest utterances on Beethoven, he is the disciple glad to do homage to his master.
"A century may pass," said Schopenhauer in a letter to the publishers of the (English) Foreign Review and Continental Miscellany, offering to translate Kant for them, in response to a wish he had seen expressed in their journal that England might ere long have a translation of Kant, "a century may pass ere there shall again meet in the same head so much Kantian Philosophy, with so much English, as happen to dwell together in mine." Likewise centuries may elapse before another such musician will appear possessing the literary ability, critical faculty, ardor and enthusiasm that Wagner had for this work.
There is an affinity between them in which mind speaks to mind. When writing on Bach's influence on Beethoven, he says:[H] "If Haydn passed as teacher of the youth, for the mightily unfolding art-life of the man, our great Sebastian Bach became his leader. Bach's wonder-work became his Bible; in it he read, and clean forgot that world of clangor heard no longer." This describes Wagner's own spiritual relationship to Beethoven, and the exaltation that must have been his on reading the symphonies, the Mass in D, the overtures. He exhausts himself in praise of each. He makes the Third Leonore Overture of as much account as the entire opera; he continually refers to the Egmont and the Coriolanus Overtures, and says that in the latter and in the Third Leonore, Beethoven stands alone and beyond all imitation.
[H] Mr. Ellis's translation.
An evidence of Wagner's overpowering genius exists in the originality and unique character of his work, while giving himself up so unreservedly to this spiritual guidance. The two, however, were quite unlike in many respects. Neither could have done the work of the other. Beethoven, almost a failure in operatic composition, undertook it no more after one trial, while Wagner was irresistibly drawn to this style from the beginning. He felt that with Beethoven the last word had been said in pure instrumental music, while his literary talents also served to draw him into this field of operatic composition where they could find their proper outlet. With that unerring poetic sense which guided him in the selection of his subjects, he always has the romantic element to the fore. The atmosphere of romanticism which invests all his works, is what gives them much of their value. Through the force and purity of his literary instinct, he was enabled to select topics of supreme interest, so that his imagination was kept at white heat while composing. His originality and absolute confidence in himself prevented him from following Beethoven to any marked extent. He was forced to hew out a new path for himself. He was, however, not averse to occasionally taking a hint from him when it would serve his purpose. It is the prerogative of genius to take its material wherever it can be found. "Plato," said Emerson, "plays sad havoc with our originalities." Beethoven's influence is plainly discernible in the preludes and overtures of the Wagner dramas, which are symphonic throughout. The frequent use Wagner makes of the trombones, when he wishes to be particularly impressive, recalls Beethoven. Each had a high opinion of the trombone where solemnity was required, and made constant use of it. Beethoven applied it with peculiar effect in the Benedictus of the Mass in D, and in the Ninth Symphony, which is paralleled by Wagner's use of it in Parsifal, and in the Funeral march in Siegfried. The extraordinary uses to which he puts the pedal-point, as well as the variation form, are instances which show the influence of the older master.
When, however, he takes an idea from Beethoven, he improves on it, broadening and amplifying it, in general putting it to a better use than it was where he found it. A great dramatic work admits of fuller and longer treatment of an idea than is possible in the other forms in which music can be embodied. The instances just quoted are minor ones of general application. Of the conceptions in which he is specially indebted to Beethoven, the most important come from the Mass in D. Here the older master, by the very form in which the ideas are cast, had to hold himself in. He was not able to give them the significance in the Mass, which is perfectly proper in great music dramas; and this enlarging and widening of the poetic conception,—this splendor in which it is portrayed,—not only justifies the course of his follower in adopting it, but also calls attention anew to the commanding genius to whom such things are possible.
Some of Wagner's most entrancing effects have their origin in Beethoven. His method of using the violins and flutes in the highest register in prolonged notes, as in the Lohengrin Prelude, and in general when portraying celestial music, are obtained from this source. The Mass in D gives several instances where this idea is presented, not by harp (the customary way), but as Wagner has done in Lohengrin, by the violins and wood-winds in the highest register, beginning pianissimo, gradually descending and augmenting in volume and sonority as the picturing merges from spiritual to worldly concerns. Beethoven's work abounds in intellectual subtleties of this kind. Wagner is sometimes credited with having originated this method for the portrayal of celestial music. Mr. Louis C. Elson says: "Wagner, alone, of all the great masters, does not use the harp for celestial tone coloring, but violins and wood-winds, in prolonged notes in the highest positions. Schumann, Berlioz, Saint-Saens, in fact all the modern tone colorists who have given celestial pictures, use the harp in them, purely because of the association of ideas which come to us from the Scriptures, and this association of the harp with heaven and the angels, only came about because the instrument was the most developed possessed by man at the time the sacred book was written. Wagner's tone coloring is intrinsically the more ecstatic.... Wagner is the first who has broken through this harp conventionality."
In the Wagner-Liszt correspondence, Wagner states that the Lohengrin Prelude typifies choirs of angels bearing the Holy Grail to earth. This idea and the method of its development can be found in the symphonic thought which follows the Preludium to the Benedictus of the Beethoven Mass.
It will be necessary to make a short digression and explain a portion of the canon of the Mass to enable the reader to understand what follows. During the office of the Eucharist the celebrant repeats certain prayers inaudible to the congregation. These begin during the latter part of the Sanctus, which immediately precedes the Benedictus, and are connected with the ceremony of the consecration of the Host. A part of them are conducted in absolute silence. The choir is not required to be silent during all the prayers said by the celebrant, and the occasion is frequently utilized, particularly at high festivals, by the introduction of orchestral music or a brilliant chorus. The choir is silent during the elevation of the Host and chalice, which takes place immediately after the consecration. It is a period of peculiar solemnity, the congregation kneeling in silent prayer at the signal of a gong. After the consecration the priest elevates the Host and chalice, and with the people still kneeling, offers up a prayer silently, the conclusion of which is as follows: "We most humbly beseech Thee, Almighty God, command these things to be carried by the hands of Thy holy angels to Thy altar on high, in the sight of Thy Divine Majesty, that as many as shall partake of the most sacred body and blood of Thy Son at this altar may be filled with every heavenly grace and blessing." The central thought of this prayer is that the sacred elements are borne to heaven by invisible hands.
In the Beethoven Mass a Preludium for orchestra is introduced, to fill in the interval while the celebrant is occupied with these silent prayers. It is an innovation, showing how thoroughly alive Beethoven was to the development of every phase of his subject. Ordinarily, no provision is made for this by the composer, the organist being permitted the privilege of interpolating hymns like the O Salutaris or the Tantum ergo. The Preludium is so timed that it ends at the conclusion of the prayer we have quoted, when the sacred elements are in heaven and are about being returned to earth. It is at this point that the symphonic thought begins, which at the first bar calls to mind celestial harmonies. Here we have the tone-figure, as in the Lohengrin Prelude, given by the violins and flutes in the highest register, beginning in faintest pianissimo. At the second bar the melody begins to descend, being augmented in force by the gradual addition of the more powerful instruments as well as voices when the elements are again on earth. The Lohengrin Prelude has the same idea, but it is developed to a greater extent, with a richer orchestration, the idea being carried to greater length, and rendered more significant in every way, as befits its dramatic character. In both cases, however, the orchestral figure is introduced by the same instruments, and in much the same manner.
The Mass in D furnishes another instance where the celestial harmonies are introduced to still better purpose than in the Benedictus. It is in that portion of the Credo, beginning with the Et incarnatus. The delicate ethereal nature of this music, as indicated by the violins and flutes in the highest positions, is so transcendental, so imbued with spirituality, as almost to evade analysis. By the magic of Beethoven's art the impression is conveyed that the listener overhears far-off angel voices from other spheres, when the heavens were opened for the descent of the Son of God to earth. The instruments give out the merest intimations of sound, scintillations that suggest it rather. In the opening bars of the movement, just before the introduction of this tone-figure, he uses an ancient ecclesiastical style, the Plagal, a mode that obtained centuries before Palestrina. Harsh and strident, inharmonious, are the tones, which in the opening Adagio typify the dread, the foreboding and dismay, that can be supposed to have been felt by the Son of God when the time came to give up a beatific state and enter on the actualities of earthly existence. The sin of the world is already being borne in anticipation. Suddenly we are in the midst of celestial harmonies, delicate gradations and mergings of tones, subtleties of expression, ethereal, evanescent, that come faintly at first on the senses, giving us revelations of spiritual heights, of transcendent states and conditions of the soul. Mankind is here afforded a glimpse beyond the veil. These strains continue until the words et homo factus est (and was made man) are reached. At this point the melodies are suddenly cut off, the doors are closed, and we are excluded from further participation in things not meant for mortal ears. A change of tonality and time further accentuates the changed conditions that prevail as the story goes through the events of the crucifixion, death and burial of Christ.[I]
[I] Beethoven's love of strongly defined contrasts is nowhere better illustrated than here. The sharp discordant tones, which characterize the opening bars of the movement, are simply pushed aside by the new. It is the subjugation of the worldly by the spiritual, of suffering by happiness.
The Mass in D can be said to be the parent of some of the Parsifal music. Wagner had the discernment to seize on the intellectual subtleties he found there, and to put them to happiest uses. If we compare the instrumental effects just noted with the exquisitely delicate music that opens the Parsifal Prelude after the introductory leit motif, we find a solution to each, as well as an affinity, in the religious mysticism in which each is enveloped. There is a central theme, but so shadowy and unreal as to be hardly apparent. Like a nimbus these shimmerings of sound from the violins surround and permeate it, so that one is not aware of any particular melody, but rather it is perceived that the atmosphere is full of a divine melody, as if by spiritual insight the listener had attained to a state of mind akin to that of the seer, and had, for the time being, become one with the composer. The effect is produced of being in the presence of something holy.
The Naturlangsamkeit necessary to the birth of any great art-work sometimes extends to its recognition and appreciation by the public. Beethoven considered the Mass in D his greatest achievement, but it gains ground very slowly. It is rarely mentioned, and seldom performed. Similarly Bach's greatest works slumbered nearly a century until brought to light by Mendelssohn.
It is significant that Wagner was as world-weary from middle-age on as was Beethoven. Like him he took refuge in creative work. Both were pioneers, always in advance of their time, cheerfully making the sacrifices which this position entails, diverging ever more and more with advancing years from beaten paths and the ideas of others on the subject of their art. Resignation and asceticism, the goal of mankind, was Wagner's solution of the problem of existence, a conclusion arrived at after reading Schopenhauer. Beethoven had also come to it long before reaching middle-age. Wagner was, in his later years, a mystic, as was Beethoven; and like Beethoven his most congenial work in those years was of a religious character.
INDEX
| A | N |
| B | O |
| C | P |
| D | Q |
| E | R |
| F | S |
| G | T |
| H | U |
| I | V |
| J | W |
| K | X |
| L | Y |
| M | Z |
- Adagio, the, 62.
- Adversity, school of, 6.
- Altruism, 43, 164.
- American Revolution, 3, 4.
- Andante, the, 123.
- Antwerp, 4.
- Appassionata Sonata, 14, 44, 63, 66, 70, 71.
- Archduke Rudolph, 80 et seq., 84, 93, 107, 108, 129, 188, 206,
- Aristocracy, of Vienna, 41.
- Art, office of, 4.
- Art-history (this country), 181.
- Artist-manhood, of Beethoven, 227.
- Artistic temperament, 87.
- Art-work, 236.
- Art-workers, 39.
- Aryan ancestry, 195.
- Aspern, battle of, 83.
- Atterbohm, 121.
- Attrition, of mind on mind, 15.
- Augustines, church of, 212.
- Austria, Emperor of, 42, 81, 172.
- Austria, Empress of, 5.
- Austrians in Italy, 42.
- Bach, Dr., Beethoven's attorney, 209.
- Bach, J.S., 8, 20, 27, 28, 32, 73, 75, 147, 173, 220, 225,
- Baden, 116, 158, 173, 193.
- Battle Symphony, 103 et seq.
- Bautzen, battle of, 102.
- Bavarian soldiers, 104.
- Bayreuth, 226.
- Beautiful in music, 4.
- Beethoven: Altruism of, 40, 164,
- Adagios, 123,
- Aim, 219,
- Age of, 211,
- Absorption in his work, 18, 121,
- Art-life of, 229,
- Artist-life, 191,
- Artistic instinct, 34,
- Approachable, 177,
- Asceticism, 111, 116, 161,
- Adopts nephew, 110,
- Awkwardness, 134,
- Bach's influence on, 229,
- Brevier, 141,
- Catholic, in religion, 161,
- Creative talent, 27,
- Conduct of life, 39,
- Court suit, buys a, 38,
- Concert for Philharmonic Society of London, 182,
- Copyrights, 201,
- Consideration for others, 209,
- Copyists, his, 187, 188,
- Church music, predilection for, 147,
- Concept of life, 7,
- Drama, and the, 14,
- Dancing, and, 39,
- Destiny, accepts his, 100,
- Deafness, progress of, 96,
- Ethical character of, 126, 197,
- Every-day life, 96,
- Father, his, 4,
- Favorite authors, 13,
- Failing health, 200,
- Forecasts his future, 37,
- Friendship, need of, 177,
- and Goethe, 90-92,
- Gastro-intestinal disturbances, 88,
- Grandfather, 4, 5,
- Grammar, lapses from in letters, 138,
- Habits, at Johann's, 201,
- and Happiness, 38,
- Helplessness, his, 137,
- Humor, 126, 133, 135,
- History, insatiable reader of, 140,
- Intellectual bias, 14, 28, 141,
- Infinitude, 124,
- Introspection, 37, 97,
- Illnesses of, 88, 204, 207,
- Individuality, 27,
- Intuitive faculties, 41, 217,
- Improvising: in Allegro movements, 29,
- Improvising: in Variations, 29,
- Improvising at a charity concert, 93,
- Journal, his, 101, 116, 147, 161, 182, 184, 219 (note-book), 71, 123, 165,
- Kindliness and humility, 88,
- Lawsuits, 145,
- Line extinct on male side, 118,
- Laughter, virtuoso in, 135,
- Last words of, 210,
- Library, 140,
- Life-work of, 71, 160,
- Life-drama, 162,
- Letters to publishers, 193,
- Litigation over nephew, 111,
- Life, a difficult problem, 101,
- Love affairs of, 60, 87-88,
- "Last five symphonies," 226,
- Landmark in music, 223,
- Ménage, the, 111, 116,
- Mother, his, 6; death of, 9,
- Muse, his, 145,
- Musical library, 139,
- Mental processes of, 15,
- Mysticism, his, 96, 195,
- Nature, love of, 122,
- Naïveté of, 135,
- Optimism, his, 98,
- Opera, early familiarity with, 14,
- Orchestra, and the, 3, 14, 75,
- Organist, as, 7,
- the Philosopher, 52,
- as Patriot, 104-105,
- Philosophy, gist of, 218,
- and Persian literature, 140,
- Quartets, his, 98,
- Republicanism, his, 41, 81, 146,
- Repartee, ready in, 136,
- Religion, his, 219,
- Rhenish ancestry, 121,
- Servants, difficulties with, 184, 186, 188,
- Seer, the, 163, 195, 217, 236,
- Scherzo, and the, 33, 34,
- Sarcastic moods, his, 187,
- Spiritual insight, 97, 194,
- Strenuousness, his, 121,
- Sonatas, 98, 145,
- Social successes, 27,
- Symphonies of, language of buoyant mood, 98,
- Sociological questions, 165,
- Solitary life, 86, 208,
- Subtleties, in works of, 232,
- Sketch-books, 18, 27, 32, 49, 85, 97, 122, 123, 147,
- the Symphonist, 49, 75,
- Two masses, 124,
- Teaching, dislike of, 80,
- Tone-poet, 191,
- Unique work of, 38,
- Virtuosity of, 63-64,
- Works, happy ending to, 164,
- Work, his one resource, 206,
- Work, significance of his, 220,
- Will, codicil added, 209,
- World, a difficult problem to, 184,
- World-weary, 236,
- World, at odds with the, 24,
- World, withdrawing from, 97,
- World, "the play with it," 97.
- Beethoven, Johann van, 93, 94, 199, 204, 208, 215,
- Beethoven, Karl van, brother of composer, 86,
- Beethoven, Karl van, nephew of composer, 110, et seq., 116, 180, 182, 198, 199, 207-208, 210, 215, 219,
- Beklemmt, cavatina B♭ quartet, 194.
- Bergman, C., 166.
- Berlioz, 232.
- Bernadotte, Gen., 43, 45; king of Sweden, 43.
- Bigot, Marie, virtuosity of, 63.
- Black Spaniards, house of, 204.
- Boehm, J., violinist, 195.
- Boehme, Madame, 13.
- Bohemia, Baths of, 88.
- Bonn, 13, 16, 17, 18, 23, 31, 37, 80, 82, 88,
- Boswell, 130.
- Bouilly, 49.
- Brahma, 97.
- Brentano, Bettina, 87.
- Breuning, Stephen von, 11, 13, 56, 174 et seq., 198, 205, 209, 210,
- British Museum, 27.
- Broadwood piano, Beethoven's, 135-136.
- Brotherhood of man, 40.
- Browne, Count, 26, 62.
- Bruno, Giordano, 73, 132.
- Brunswick, Count, 27, 44, 68, 71,
- Buddha, 164, 223.
- Bundeslied, 142.