In the character of Parsifal himself certain traits are accentuated by Wagner. These are the complete innocence and the compassionate nature. With compassion Wagner had a deep sympathy. He was so tender to dumb animals and to animate creatures in general that he felt readily the essence of pity which plays so important a part in the old legends. But the older Parsifals, when on their travels, were warriors; they fought their way through life, felling ruthlessly all who opposed them. Wagner's Parsifal is all tenderness and pity. Here, again, we meet with the powerful influence on Wagner of Schopenhauer. Enlightenment by pity is the ethical principle of Schopenhauer's philosophy. Something, too, must be attributed to Wagner's interest in religion. Liszt, an emotionalist in worship, inspired Wagner with emotionalism in sacred matters, and we may infer that certain rapt states of mind, not uncommon to thinkers of the hysteric sort, worked in the formation of "Parsifal."
For the rest there is little to say. Gurnemanz combines the persons and acts of the Gurnemanz and Trevrezent of the epics. Klingsor follows the outline provided by the earlier stories, but Wagner has added one feature not found in them. This magician, with his soul tainted with some unknown sin, was unable to slay the lust which ever burned in his bosom, and in order that he might win the Grail he mutilated himself. Here we come upon another resemblance between this story and that of the Nibelung hoard. To win the gold Alberich renounced love. We have already seen how the Grail resembles the hoard, and this incident in the life of Klingsor, added by Wagner, brings the two stories even closer together.
In telling the story, Wagner has pushed to the front all the most beautiful elements, and has accentuated the Christianity of the tale. He has preached a sermon on the necessity of personal purity in the service of God, on the beauty of renunciation of sensual delight, on the depth of the curse of self-indulgence, and on the nature of repentance. But let it not be supposed that the influence of "Parsifal" rests wholly on the ethical truths contained in it. Its real power is in Wagner's perception of the emotional force of the action of certain ethical ideas upon human nature. By centralising the action of his drama on these emotions, he has put before us a tremendous play of the inner life of man's soul when struggling with its most formidable problems, its own most irresistible passions. "Parsifal" is a religious drama, but it is one for the same reason that the "Prometheus" of Æschylus was. It is a problem play also, and for the same reason as any modern French social drama is. Its boldness lies in the fact that it readopts the stage as the medium for the publication of tenets of religious belief and for the exhibition of the naked soul besieged by lust and tried by the moral law. That use was common in the time of the Greek tragedians. It is an exemplification of Wagner's theory that the theatre ought to be an artistic expression of the thoughts and the aspirations of a people. Its moving power lies in its grasp on the secret life of every man and woman who goes to witness its performance.
III.—The Musical Plan
The musical plan of "Parsifal" is one of peculiar power and its outward aspects are of great beauty. The first act is almost wholly devoted to an exposition of the fundamental thoughts of the drama. We are introduced to the realm of the Grail, the suffering of Amfortas, the eagerness of Kundry to serve and her enslavement to the will of Klingsor, to the "guileless fool" and his failure to ask the question, and to the solemn ceremony of the Last Supper. The second act is devoted to a presentation of the working of the evil element. Klingsor through his flower-maidens strives to seduce the guileless fool, who is saved largely by his own guilelessness. Here we have all the most sensuous and freely composed music. The first act teems with the fundamental and significant motives of the score. The second is rich in luscious melody, spontaneous, dance-like in form and colour, and asking of the hearer nothing but self-relaxation. The third act again becomes solemn, but in its first scene the solemnity is charged with the deep and quiet joy of Good Friday. With the return to the castle of the Grail, the fundamental motives are once more brought into action and the development of themes reaches its climax.
The prelude to the drama sets forth some of the principal musical ideas and attunes the mind to the key of the first act. It opens with the solemn strains of the theme of the Last Supper.
THE LAST SUPPER.
This theme becomes one of the principal elements of the score, being utilised throughout the drama to signify the sacredness of the association of the knights of the Grail. The second theme of the prelude is that of the Grail itself, which is here presented to us in a different musical aspect from that of the "Lohengrin" score. There the Grail was celebrated as a potency by which the world was aided, while here it is brought before us as the visible embodiment of a faith, the memento of a crucified Saviour. The theme is, therefore, one of much solemnity.
THE GRAIL.
The Vorspiel next proclaims, in a manner which leaves us no doubt of its purport, the triumphant motive of Belief:
BELIEF.
These three ideas—the Last Supper, the Grail, and Belief—form the materials of the prelude, and become of fundamental importance in the score of the drama proper. They play their parts chiefly in the first and third acts in putting the hearer in the proper mood for the appreciation of the solemn ceremonials in the Grail castle and for a full comprehension of the religious elements of the drama. For the suffering of Amfortas, with which we are made acquainted in the first scene, there is a musical symbol, which is utilised throughout the score at the proper places:
AMFORTAS’S SUFFERING.
A very beautiful answer to this is the music with which the promise of the healing knight is introduced. It is sung by Gurnemanz, and repeated by the young knights who are with him:
THE PROMISE.
|
Durch Mitleid wissend, der reine Tor. By pity 'lightened The guileless fool. |
With Kundry we find associated three principal musical ideas. The first of these is that which places before us the wildness of her nature, the stormy flight, and the curse of laughter:
THE WILD KUNDRY.
The second is a theme designed to represent the element of magic, as exercised by Klingsor in the control of Kundry:
SORCERY.
Lastly, we have one of those simple themes in thirds which always seemed to mean sympathy or helpfulness to the mind of Wagner. It first appears in the score when Gurnemanz asks Kundry whence she brought the balsam:
KUNDRY THE HELPFUL.
The personality of Klingsor himself is indicated by this theme:
KLINGSOR.
Two themes are especially associated with Parsifal. The first is that of his mother, Herzeleide. This theme has importance because of Kundry's use of the history of the mother to touch the heart of the son:
HERZELEIDE.
The Parsifal theme, however, is used to designate directly the personality of the guileless knight:
PARSIFAL.
Let the reader compare this motive with that of Lohengrin (see page 286), and note the close musical relationship. This is in part an inversion of that, while the triple rhythm here used robs the Parsifal theme of the militant brilliancy found in that of the rescuing knight of the earlier drama. At the entrance of Parsifal, who has just shot a swan, we hear again the Swan motive from "Lohengrin" (see page 287). The interval between the first and second scenes of the first act introduces a new theme of great beauty. Gurnemanz leads Parsifal toward the castle of the Grail, and a remarkable change of scene is effected by the use of a panorama. During this change an instrumental passage is built up on the tones of the castle bells, which, at first heard distantly, gradually swell to a grand peal:
THE BELLS.
As we come with the two to the hall of the Grail we hear the musical representation of the cry or lament of the Saviour:
THE LAMENT.
The love-feast scene, which follows, is made up of the principal themes relating to the Grail and the faith of the knights, which are developed in choruses of wonderful beauty. The opening of the second act brings the motives of Klingsor, sorcery, and the suffering of Amfortas all into active use. The music is stormy, passionate, at times furious, till the flower-maidens appear to tempt Parsifal, and then we come to the long passage of freely written melody already described. The significant themes return in the scene between Kundry and Parsifal, but their use is so obvious that it requires no comment. With the awakening of Parsifal's understanding and his recital of his new discoveries, there enters a motive not previously heard, that of Good Friday:
GOOD FRIDAY.
In the first scene of the third act another new theme, that of the atonement, comes forward:
ATONEMENT.
We have now before us the principal musical materials of the score. But in no other of Wagner's dramas is the mere enumeration of themes so unsatisfactory as it is in "Parsifal." The combination of the musical ideas is so subtle, the building of the large mood pictures, of which they are the elements, so masterly, the effect of the general result so potent with the hearer, that in "Parsifal" one may with the most perfect security throw aside all study of the thematic catalogues and abandon himself to the dramatic influence of the music. This does not mean that "Parsifal" is a more artistic work than Wagner's other dramas, but that the moods are so large and so elementary that music very readily embodies them and brings the auditor under their influence. Much of this is due no doubt to the atmosphere of the Bayreuth Theatre, where alone up to the present this work can be heard. What the effect of "Parsifal" will be when divorced from its present surroundings must be a matter of speculation, but the most devoted Wagnerites will continue to hope that this art-work will not speedily become the property of the ordinary opera-house.
APPENDIX A
THE YOUTHFUL SYMPHONY
Most of Wagner's biographers have underestimated the historical importance of the juvenile symphony of the master. Mr. Seidl wrote: "As one takes off his hat in Leipsic before the house in which Wagner was born, in order to honour the spot where a great genius first saw the light, so the musician of the future will take this symphony into his hands with the greatest interest and amazement, since it is one of the foundation-blocks of the structure whose capstones are 'Tristan,' 'Götterdämmerung,' and 'Parsifal.'" The truth is, that most of the biographers never heard the symphony performed. It was produced by the late Anton Seidl in Chickering Hall, New York, on Friday evening, March 2, 1888, and it was my fortune to hear the performance. At that time Mr. Seidl wrote to the New York Tribune the letter from which the foregoing quotation was taken, and gave an account of the finding of the lost parts of the work. He said:
"He [Wagner] was continually recurring to a symphony which he had lost sight of after one performance in Leipsic at a concert of the Euterpe, and one performance in Würzburg. In the latter place it was that the trombone parts were lost. Letters were written in all directions to all his friends and acquaintances, but no trace of the symphony was found. Then he requested the littérateur Tappert, of Berlin, a zealous and lucky discoverer of Wagnerian relics, to make journeys wherever he thought it advisable in the interest of the symphony. Tappert, after many inquiries and much reflection, drafted a plan of discovery following lines suggested by the biography of the master, and set out upon a tour through Würzburg, Magdeburg, Leipsic, Prague, and finally Dresden. In each place he ransacked all the dwellings, inns, theatres and concert-rooms in which Wagner had lived or laboured; but in vain. At last in Dresden he visited Tichatschek, the famous tenor, who at this time was already bedridden. He knew all the houses in which Wagner had lived while he was Hofkapellmeister, but nothing was to be found in any of them. Tichatschek got a little disgruntled at the much questioning to which he was subjected and Tappert had to return to Berlin. Before doing so, however, he requested Fürstenau, the flautist, to cross-question Tichatschek thoroughly some day, when he was in a good humour, concerning the possible whereabouts of some trunks which Wagner had left behind him in Dresden; for Wagner had once said that when he fled from Dresden he left all his possessions and did not know what had become of them.
"The scheme was successful. Tichatschek remembered that in his own attic were several old trunks belonging to he did not know whom. Fürstenau looked through them, but soon came down and declared that, though musical manuscripts were in the attic, they were only unknown parts and that none bore Wagner's handwriting. Tappert called for the parts to be sent to Berlin for his inspection. He recognised at a glance that they were not in his handwriting, but on carefully examining the separate sheets he found memoranda in lead pencil which he thought looked like the youthful handwriting of Wagner. To assure himself, he copied the first theme of the first violin part and sent it to Wagner's wife, who played it on a pianoforte in a room adjoining that in which Wagner, suspecting nothing, sat at breakfast. The master listened a moment in silence and then ran into the room, joyfully shouting that it was the theme of the symphony for which he was hunting. The discovery was made! The parts were sent at once to Bayreuth, and I was called upon to make the score out of them."
The trombone parts of the last movement were missing, but Wagner subsequently discovered the key to the leading of these voices in the elaborately contrapuntal scheme of the movement and rewrote them. The symphony was then ready for performance. It was Wagner's original intention to play the symphony on the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of his artistic career. But he was unable to carry out this plan. He subsequently decided to have it given for the Christmas celebration of 1882, and accordingly it was played under his own bâton in Venice at the birthday fête of his wife.
The symphony, which is in the conventional four movements, and is in the key of C major, contains a curious mingling of juvenility in ideas with maturity of handling. It shows that Weinlig's lessons in counterpoint were not lost, for its polyphony is masterly, and the close working out of the last movement, in the style of Mozart's fugal "Jupiter" symphony, may well have aroused the admiration of Rochlitz.
The symphony begins with an introduction marked sostenuto e maestoso, built on this theme.
It will readily be seen that this is a simple and effective theme, designed with a view to contrapuntal treatment. Free modulation, transposition of parts, and alteration of details make up the general treatment of this motive. The first movement, allegro con brio, is built on a first subject, inspiringly vigorous in movement, but quite devoid of originality in melodic form.
This is announced in a forcible manner, copied after some of the Titanic outbursts of Beethoven. There is a short development of this theme, in the course of which the germ of the second subject appears. Thus Wagner early endeavoured to follow the plan of Beethoven in making his second subjects grow out of his first. The second theme, when revealed in its entirety, proves to be this:
The master utilised the rhythmic clearness of this thought in the production of bold, march-like effects. Two episodes are introduced, and in these one hears the voice of the future Wagner. One of them bears a striking resemblance in character to the music of the fight between Siegfried and the dragon. The working out is confined almost wholly to the first subject, with occasional use of the episodes, and the recapitulation is reached by a strenuous climax, in which the orchestral thunderer of the future may be heard.
The second movement, andante, opens with two sustained notes, C and E, given out by the oboes and clarinets, followed by a graceful introductory phrase, prefatory to a lovely melody of folk-song character, which is announced by the violas and gradually spread among the entire body of instruments.
Wagner himself said that this movement could never have been written had not the fifth and seventh symphonies of Beethoven been known to him, but although his method of construction follows that of the sovereign of the symphonic world, his ideas and his orchestral expression of them are his own. The second theme of the andante, which need not be quoted, is martial, thus giving the necessary contrast to the movement.
The third movement is the scherzo, marked allegro assai. The movement is decidedly imitative, yet it shows that the youth had attained a remarkable mastery of form and style. The first theme is this:
This sweeps along in a bright and vivacious manner, full of sunny simplicity. Then comes the trio founded on this idea:
The working out of the ideas is really very ingenious, and despite the imitations the movement goes far to demonstrate the possession of high gifts by the young composer. The last movement, allegro molto vivace, is the least pleasing to the average hearer, but it is an amazing exhibition of contrapuntal mastery in one so immature. The principal theme is this:
Here the model in thought is Mozart, and the same master is followed in the working out. Wagner, in later years, speaking of the boy who wrote this symphony, said: "He cares no more for melodies, only for themes and their treatment; he delights in the stretti of the fugue, in the combination of two or three motives; he enters into orgies of counterpoint; he exhausts every imaginable artifice." This is a sufficient description of this new "Jupiter" movement, which ends with a stirring peroration, presto, closing with as many chords of the tonic and dominant as there are at the finish of the fifth symphony of Beethoven.
APPENDIX B
WAGNER AND THE BALLET
The difficulties which have always stood in the path of a realisation of Wagner's ideals in regard to the ballet in opera are worthy of some consideration, because they are the results of a high conception of the functions of the dance in the drama. Wagner's troubles in this department began with his "Rienzi." In his "Communication" he says: "I by no means hunted about in my material 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." He confesses in a note that this ballet had to be omitted from all the stage performances of "Rienzi."
Why? Simply because the pantomimic ballet called for imagination on the part of the ballet-master and mimetic skill in the dancers. If these elements in the ballet were wanting in Wagner's day, they are almost wholly absent now. Yet, except in cases where the ballet is seen by the spectator to be a mere entertainment for the personages on the stage, as in the garden scene of "Les Huguenots," it ought to have some connection with the drama. That later composers than Wagner have had some desires of this sort is proved by the presence of the Brocken scene in Boïto's "Mefistofele," the inferno scene in Franchetti's "Asrael," and other such episodes. But nowhere is there such an opportunity for a highly significant ballet as in the first scene of "Tannhäuser."
Whoever cares to read it, may find in the essay of Wagner on the "Art-work of the Future" a long disquisition on the nature of the dance. In brief, he says that in the dance the material is man himself, and the method of expression is motion. This motion is governed by rhythm, but its purpose is the communication of the essence of the material to the spectator. In other words—not Wagner's—dance approaches speech from one side just as absolute music does from the other. It is a painter of mood pictures, just as an orchestra is. It therefore reaches its highest form in pantomime, or mimetic action. Again, in "Opera and Drama," Wagner tells us at some length how ballet music as written by the conventional opera composer has cramped the development of this beautiful art of mimetic dancing, the very art, in a sense, from which the drama itself originated at the altar of Bacchus. By writing in the prescribed dance-forms and rhythms the composer compelled the dancer to confine himself to certain conventional steps and figures. Wagner's ideal was a symphonic poem of motion, mimetic in its essence, following the incidents of a story, and moving to the strains of an orchestral background which should free the dancer from formulas and at the same time paint in tone-colours the moods of the pantomime.
The difficulty in the way of realising this ideal at present is the total separation of the arts of dancing and pantomime. Only a few of the dancers of to-day possess the old-fashioned schooling which would make possible a performance of Auber's "La Muette de Portici." To this unique work Wagner owed much of the food for thought which resulted in his opinions upon the office of the ballet in opera. I have witnessed some representations of this work in recent years—not many—but always with sorrow at the utter inability of the impersonator of the dumb girl to realise the author's conception. She has always been a mere ballet-dancer, striving to perform her work on the strict lines of the conventional stage dance. Now what such a part requires is some one who can dance, but who does act. And that is what the Wagner ballet, especially in "Tannhäuser," needs. The conventional ballet steps and arm movements are at once seen to be absurd, or else they make the scene appear so to the thoughtless spectator, who notes only what he sees. To interpret properly the Venusberg scene of Wagner's third opera there should really be a corps of Pilar-Morins. But just here again would come a difficulty. The Pilar-Morins would not be dancers, and, while they might perform an intelligible pantomime, they would obliterate from their work every trace of rhythm, and thus once more be untrue to Wagner's almost intangible, yet not impracticable, ideal.
And of course in the end we have to reckon with a public which has no skill in the comprehension of pantomime, and hardly any in the appreciation of the dance. For in this frivolous age of pictorial dramatic art the dance means coloured lights and high kicking. Hélas! Yet I still believe that if Wagner's designs in such scenes as that of the Venusberg and the Roman festival in "Rienzi" could be properly carried out, the public would awake to the existence of a poetic and beautifully graphic art which is now quite unknown to it.
THE END
INDEX
Explanatory Note.—Subjects directly connected with the personal experiences of Wagner will be found alphabetically indexed under Wagner, Richard. Names of persons and topics associated with Wagner's life and works, but having importance in themselves, will be found in the general index. All topics directly connected with the great music dramas (except leading motives) are indexed under the titles of the works. All the musical illustrations, with their explanations, are indexed under Leading Motives.
A
"Allons à la Courtille," 41
Ander, 118
Anderson, 98
"A Pilgrimage to Beethoven," 42
"Art and Climate," 86
"Art and Revolution," 76, 86, 179, 180
Art, as found by Wagner, 176
Arthurian legends, see "Parsifal" and "Tristan und Isolde"
Artistic career of Wagner, periods of, 213, 214
Art-Theories of Wagner, 167 et seq.;
alliteration, 200 et seq.;
ballet, 487;
commercialism opposed to, 174, 176;
discovery of, 176;
drama, not opera, 204;
early, 18 et seq., 228;
emotions, musical treatment of, 183, 185, 197, 205, 208, 209, 216;
ethical ideas, 215;
feeling and understanding, 182;
form, adopted, 186 et seq., 198, 199;
forms, abolished, 178, 185 et seq., 197;
fully developed, nature of, 167 et seq.;
good and evil principles, war of, 216;
Greek drama, relations to, 179, 184, 207, 218;
historical drama as opposed to mythical, 183 et seq.;
ideal of his work, 206;
incompatibility with "opera" discovered, 177;
later, conceived, 53;
later, expanded, 61, 74;
leitmotiv system, 186, 187, 190 et seq.;
leitmotive classified, 193;
leitmotive, development of, 193 et seq.;
libretto a drama, 178;
lyric drama, relation to, 168 et seq.;
materials of poetic drama, 182, 183;
melody, endless, 186, 187;
metaphysics, 216, 217;
misunderstood by admirers, 161;
misunderstood by public, 167;
moods, embodiment of, 198, 205, 206;
music for music's sake, 178;
music, office of, in drama, 190;
musical system, 186, 189 et seq., 196, 197, 198, 208, 209;
myth, advantage of in drama, 183 et seq.;
nationalism, 167, 208;
opera, old style, differences of, 168 et seq.;
opposed to public taste, 61, 66, 67, 69, 70, 160, 161;
orchestra, 189, 190, 206;
organic union of arts, 178, 180, 186;
philosophical basis of dramas, 216;
propagation of, 67, 85 et seq.;
prose works embodying, 86 et seq., 179 et seq.;
realism as opposed to high art, 206, 207;
reforms included in, 178;
Schopenhauer's ideas, 184, 216, 217;
staff-rhyme, 200 et seq.;
symbolism in drama, 204 et seq.;
text and music, union of, 186, 202, 203, 219;
understood by Liszt, 81;
verse-form, 200 et seq.;
woman, saving grace, 215;
"Word-tone-speech," 204
"Art-work of the Future," 86, 179, 180
Attila, 369 et seq.
Auber, "La Muette de Portici," influence on Wagner, 18, 43
Auditorium darkened, 140
Autobiographic sketch, 52
B
Ballet in "Tannhäuser," 114, 115
Ballet, Wagner and the, 114, 487
Barbarossa, Friedrich, 72
Bayreuth, becomes famous, 140;
festivals, deficit of first, 144, 146;
festivals, directed by Mme. Wagner, 153;
festivals, still popular, 153;
plan nearly fails, 139;
theatre, see Festspielhaus; Wagner goes to, 136;
why selected, 137
Bayreuther Blätter, 147, 150
"Beethoven," essay by Wagner, 134
Beethoven influences Wagner, 6
Belart, Hans, "Richard Wagner in Zurich," 111
Bellini, Wagner's admiration for, 18, 33
Belloni, 82
Berlioz, Hector, 42, 43, 57, 112
Beroul, 297
Bertram-Mayer, Mme., 131
Borron, Robert de, 297, 454
Boston, Wagner nights, 104
Brandt, Karl, 143
Bruckwald, Otto, 143
Brückner Brothers, 143
C
Caedmon, "Beowulf," 201
"Centennial March," 139
Chivalry, German age of, 331
Chrétien de Troyes, 454
Christian trilogy, 218
"Christopher Columbus" overture, 20, 43
"Communication to My Friends," 16, 30, 61, 66, 67, 92
Concert Ouvertüre mit Fuge, 10
"Conducting," essay on, 58, 134
Conrad III., 331
Cornelius, Peter, 125
Costa, Michael, 100