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Richard Wagner 1813–1883

By the time these lines reach the eye of our readers the excitement of the event which called them forth will have calmed down, and Wagnerian art, apart from Wagner, will we trust receive candid and impartial criticism. The brief telegram from Venice, dated February 13, announcing that ‘Richard Wagner, the celebrated composer, died here at four o’clock this afternoon,’ caused a sensation such as we have rarely witnessed; for the mournful news at once suspended even the semblance of antagonism, and those who had been ranged for years on opposite sides in the great Wagner controversy agreed to meet as brothers in the art which they mutually loved, and do homage to one who had so long and steadfastly fought for a faith which he held it a duty to enforce. Richard Wagner was, in the truest sense of the word a hero, for he set himself a task which, in spite of bitter opposition, he bravely worked out; and those who may judge him as he sometimes mercilessly judged others, must remember that in his stern and unyielding nature lay the real secret of his success. As a boy he resented control, and as a man he despised it: growing with his growth, and strengthening with his strength, his theories, at first crude and vague, gradually took form and expanded even beyond their applicability to the art with which he most sympathised. The work which drew attention to his views, ‘Oper und Drama,’ was at first read as an exposition to the convictions of one who regarded the subject more from a philosophical than a musical point of view; and few at that time imagined that he would uncompromisingly put into action a theory of opera which should aim at revolutionising the works which had for years been accepted by the musical public. But those who reasoned thus knew but little of the man who was destined, by his indomitable perseverance, not only to show to the world that lyrical works of the highest class could be moulded upon the plan he so eloquently expounded, but that he could raise up a host of adherents to his cause who would preach his doctrines, and, enlisting under the banner of this new Prophet, attempt to drive believers in the old faith from the field. In his early opera, ‘Rienzi,’ we see but little of that tendency to revolt against the form of the lyric drama then in vogue; but, in justice to the composer, it must be conceded that in this work he purposely wrote for the people rather than for himself, in the hope of obtaining a position which might enable him to introduce his reforms gradually. But the ‘Flying Dutchman’ revealed Wagner in his true light, for here we find a powerful drama primarily asserting itself, the music to which seems to grow spontaneously from the action, and accompanied by scenery which aids, without overpowering, the general effect of the work. ‘Tannhäuser’ – another step in advance – experienced a fate which would have deterred a less sanguine man from pursuing a theory which could scarcely find favour with audiences nurtured upon works diametrically opposed to these principles. Accustomed to opposition, however, Wagner seemed strengthened rather than weakened in the practical advocacy of his theories; and, although goaded, no doubt by such opposition into the use of invectives, which may perhaps have done something towards injuring his cause, he rose once more, after a brief rest, and in ‘Lohengrin’ reasserted with renewed vigour the tenets of the belief which he was resolved to uphold as long as he had power to wield a pen. Wagner’s reception in Paris was, as might be expected, most dispiriting on each visit; and the thanks of all admirers of the composer are indeed due to the King of Bavaria (with all his eccentricities, an ardent advocate of Wagner’s theories as shown in his operas) who invited him to Munich, where a performance of his ‘Tristan und Isolde’ rewarded him for much of his disappointment. His Bayreuth triumphs are well known to all our readers; and if his ‘Ring des Nibelungen,’ when brought to England, divided the lovers of the lyric drama into two factions, it must be remembered that party feeling on the merits of his works had already run somewhat high, and also that the advent of his compositions was accompanied with an invasion of German music and German singers which threatened for the moment to annihilate those national institutions which had been so long supported by the best patrons of the art. ‘Parsifal,’ which embodies the latest phase of Wagnerian art, has not yet been brought to judgement in this country; but it may reasonably be supposed that not only the music but the nature of the libretto would be fatal, at least for some time, to its due appreciation.

During the life of Wagner it was difficult indeed to gauge the real value of his contributions to musical art. The worker was so identified with his work that it seemed almost necessary to combat his theories before a listener dared to admit that he became wearied of his music. True it is that few could dispute the justice of his premises, but it might be just possible to disagree with his deductions from them. In ‘Oper und Drama,’ views are promulgated by no means new, for Gluck had advanced most of them before him; but they are so excellently supported that the reader feels under the influence of a mighty power, and awakens not from the spell until he finds that the inflexible carrying out of these views leads to the abandonment of that form which in the lyrical that have grown into his affections for years, constituted the greatest charm. A picture-gallery, for example, contains paintings, each of which individually engages our attention, and the merit of which can be recalled after leaving it; but Wagner’s Operas are like a panorama, which passes rapidly before us, dazzling our senses for a minute with artistic beauty, yet leaving only the impression of a longing for the power of concentrating our enjoyment upon some definite portion of the work. It may be asserted that if the theory is true, the reduction of the theory to practice must be equally so; but theories in art should be spoken only through an artist’s works, in proof of which we may say that Beethoven – who first inspired Wagner with a consciousness of the first real power of music – prefaced his immortal compositions with no announcement of the true mission of the art he so ennobled.

We have no desire here to do more than direct attention to what may be considered the vulnerable points in the teachings of a master who has drawn converts from all countries, and whose name – however we may differ in the value of his theories – will live in the annals of art, even more honoured perhaps as music grows to its true position in the world. Had he lived to multiply operas founded upon the model of ‘Parsifal,’ we cannot now say whether he would have strengthened or weakened the cause he had at heart; but the legacy he has bequeathed to us will sufficiently attest how a great artist can work, even when he has to create, rather than appeal to, an audience capable of rightly judging the result of his efforts.

As our readers will doubtless be glad to become acquainted with the life of a man who has absorbed so much attention amongst artists for so many years, we quote a memoir of the composer from The Musical Review, written by one thoroughly conversant with the facts of his career:-

‘Wilhelm Richard Wagner, who died at Venice on February 13, was born May 22, 1813, at Leipzig, where his father held a small municipal appointment. After his death, which took place in the same year as the composer’s birth, the widow married L. Geyer, an actor, and afterwards a portrait-painter of some merit. He, however, also died before the composer had finished his seventh year. We know little of his influence on his stepson. It seems that to some extent he recognised in the small boy artistic talent of some kind, and wanted to make him a painter, but Wagner proved an awkward pupil. At this time he used to practice by the ear little tunes on the piano, and it is said that, hearing him one day engaged in this manner, his stepfather remarked to the mother, in the weak voice of an almost dying man, “Do you think that he has talent for music?” After Geyer had died, Wagner tells us, his twice widowed mother came into the nursery to repeat to each of the children that father’s parting words. To himself she said, “He wanted to make something of you.” “For a long time afterwards,” Wagner adds, “I used to imagine that something would become of me.”

‘However, the idea of bringing him up as a musician, if ever seriously entertained, was soon abandoned. He was sent to an excellent day-school, the Kreuzschule at Dresden, and received only occasional pianoforte lessons from his private Latin master. His progress in that noble art seems to have been anything but satisfactory. Instead of practising scales and other useful digital exercises, he loved to hammer away at overtures and symphonies with a most abominable fingering of his own. After a short time his master gave him up as hopeless. “He was right,” Wagner says; “I have never learned to play the piano in all my life.” The truth is that he, the great virtuoso of the orchestra, looked down on that supplementary instrument with some disdain.

‘His first attempts at original production date from a very early period. They were not of a musical but of a poetic kind. At the age of eleven we find him pondering over the plan of a gigantic drama, conceived in the spirit of Shakespeare, but intended to far outdo the tragic pathos of that master-mind. Wagner describes his tragedy as a kind of compound of “Hamlet” and “Lear.” “The design,” he says, “was grand in the extreme. Forty-two people died in the course of the piece, and I was obliged to let most of them reappear as ghosts in the last acts, for want of living characters.” The piece, doubtless, was quite as ridiculous as this humorous self criticism implies, but it nevertheless indicates in its embryonic stage that Titanic struggle for the utmost expansion of artistic forms which characterises the whole of Wagner’s career. It proved important for his development in another respect. Not long after his play was finished he became acquainted with Beethoven’s works, which excited his impressionable youthful mind to the utmost. His witnessing a performance of that master’s music to Goethe’s “Egmont” may be considered as the decisive turning-point in Wagner’s life, for it filled him with emulative zeal to supply his own tragedy with a musical accompaniment of equal grandeur – a bold resolve certainly in one who had yet to learn the rudiments of musical art, but again indicative of that indomitable courage and energy which conquers at last. He now saw himself compelled to make some preparatory theoretical studies; the first difficulties of thorough bass and harmony once bravely encountered and overcome impelled him to attack new problems; his attention became riveted, his genius roused; he had imperceptibly grown into a musician. We, of course, do not wish to assert that by some miraculous process he acquired the mechanical part of the most difficult of arts, without a good deal of previous study. On the contrary, he had to combine his fugues and puzzle out his counterpoint in exactly the same manner as lesser mortals are wont to do. Indeed, his struggle with merely formal difficulties seems to have been not an easy one. Patience and quiet application were wanting. His master could do nothing with such a pupil, and fairly put him down as a dunce, in musical matter at least; his family was in despair; only his own courage remained undaunted. He began writing overtures on a grand scale for the full orchestra, one of which – the “climax of his nonsensicalities,” as he himself calls it – was actually performed in public, but excited only irrepressible hilarity on the part of the audience, greatly to the mortification of the aspiring young genius. This was his first period of “storm and stress,” to use Carlyle’s words; everything was seething and bubbling. But soon the waters began to clear; his first disappointment cured him of his vanity: he began to see the necessity of theoretical knowledge, and a course of serious study under Cantor Weinlig resulted, as that excellent teacher expressed it, in Wagner’s independence of formal fetters. But more than any living master could teach him Wagner learned in his intercourse with the great dead. The well-known Heinrich Dorn, at that time a friend, now the bitterest enemy of Wagner, has described the young student’s passionate, not to say violent, enthusiasm for Beethoven’s works. “I am doubtful,” he writes, “whether there ever has been a young musician more familiar with the works of Beethoven than Wagner was at eighteen. He possessed most of the master’s overtures and large instrumental scores in copies made by himself: he went to bed with the sonatas and whistled the concerti, for with the playing he could not get on very well. In brief, there was a regular furor Teutonicus, which, combined with considerable scientific culture and a peculiar activity of the mind, promised powerful shoots.”

‘Beethoven was thus the loadstar of Wagner’s early aspirations, and well it had been for him had he never swerved from it. But he had still to pass through many errors before, cleansed in the fire of adversity, he could return to the original purity of its aims.

‘The surroundings in which we next discover Wagner seem certainly anything but suited to a Beethoven enthusiast. To meet the exigencies of life, he had now to look for a more lucrative employment of his time than penning eccentric and inexecutable compositions; and the conductorship of a small operatic troupe at Magdeburg being offered to him, he accepted the position, the more eagerly as the unconventional ease of theatrical life tallied but too well with the bias of his nature. Neither were his artistic duties of a very elevated kind. He had chiefly to conduct the light productions of the French and Italian stages, then so much en vogue in Germany, and he himself confesses his childish joy in letting the orchestra “bang away,” after a fashion, to right and left of his conductor’s desk. His own productions during this period distinctly show the signs of the atmosphere in which he moved. We will not encumber the reader’s memory with the titles of several operas and numerous pièces d’occasion which owe their origin to this time of pre-historic chaos. They were written for ephemeral applause, and without any conscientious scruples as to the artistic purity of their effects. But this abandonment of principle, fortunately, did not meet with its desired reward; only one of Wagner’s operas saw the light of the stage, and, owing to insufficient rehearsals and an accumulation of other unfavourable circumstances, proved a failure. We repeat that, on the whole, this ill-luck must be considered a decidedly favourable circumstance. It may certainly be presumed that sooner or later his higher nature would have impelled him to leave the fleshpots of easy success for the toilsome desert-paths of ideal aims; but when or how this exodus might have taken place nobody can tell. As it was, the cares and troubles of his narrow sphere of action soon became intolerable to him. The small emoluments of his office were wholly insufficient to supply the demands of his refined luxurious taste; and when, in a spirit of obstinate recklessness, he resolved upon marrying an actress, the exigencies of married life further entramelled his already straitened circumstances. In addition to his domestic discomfort, he soon began to loathe the professional jealousies and intrigues which, combined with an utter want of artistic spirit, characterised the society in which his duties compelled him to mix.

‘He felt that something must be done to save himself from this sea of miseries, and the step he took, in consequence, was quite in keeping with the undauntable energy of his nature. He resolved to write a great dramatic work, and, in order to preclude the possibility of his longer remaining in the narrow sphere of provincial stage life, he fixed upon a subject, the appropriate treatment of which would require an amount of scenic splendour such as only the largest stages in Europe would have at their disposal. Rienzi, in the last Tribune, was chosen as the hero of his opera, and to Paris, at that time the musical, as well as the social centre of civilised Europe, the composer looked for a stage and a public.

‘It is evident, neither does Wagner try to conceal it, that the chief purpose aimed at in “Rienzi” was to obtain the applause of the multitude. From a psychological point of view it, therefore, scarcely marks a step in advance, and, indeed, abounds with concessions of artistic consciousness to the taste of the vulgar. But, amidst the platitudes of ordinary stage effects, we distinctly see, in the score of “Rienzi,” the action of a tremendous dramatic force, scarcely conscious, as yet, and clogged with earthly encumbrances, but capable of growth and purification. Wagner wrote the poetry and finished the music of the first two acts of “Rienzi” at Riga, where he had conducted the opera for some time. In the summer of 1839 he embarked in a sailing vessel bound for London, on his way to Paris The voyage lasted more than three weeks. Three times they were caught in terrific storms, and on one occasion the captain had to seek shelter in a Norwegian harbour. Wagner’s imagination was deeply struck with the wonders and terrors of the deep, and the impressions thus received he was soon to embody in a work to which we shall have to return. In the September of the same year he arrived at Paris, supplied by Meyerbeer with introductions to theatrical managers and full of sanguine expectations. One slightly shudders in thinking of the possible consequences which a great Paris success might have had on Wagner’s further career. Perhaps he might have been content to share with Meyerbeer, Rossini, and Halévy the lucrative laurels of a European reputation; but fortune, unlike herself, proved constant to him in her unkindness; all his attempts at obtaining publicity for his works were frustrated, and, to save himself from actual starvation, he had to go through the most degrading stages of musical slavery, such as arranging tunes from popular operas for the cornet-à-piston.

‘Again the tide of despair was rising higher and higher – again something must be done and was done by Wagner to stem its destructive progress; but in what he did, and how he did it, we see the process of purification which his artistic character had undergone during this second trial of “hope deferred.” “Rienzi,” as we said before, was written entirely with a view to outward success, to which the higher demands of art were to a great extent sacrificed; in the work which Wagner now began he scarcely hoped, nor even wished, for this success. It was conceived and written entirely to supply a demand of his own nature – the demand, that is, of pouring out the anxieties and toilings of his soul in his song. In this way music gave him help and comfort in his supreme need. The work we are referring to is “The Flying Dutchman.” It was conceived during the eventful voyage to London; the music was written at Meudon, where Wagner had retired from Paris in the spring of 1841.

‘ “Rienzi,” finished in November, 1840, concludes the first period of Wagner’s career. It was the time of his violent struggle for notoriety and self assertion, without regard to the artistic purity of the means applied. The mode of his expression was confined to the forms of the French grand opera as established by Spontini, Meyerbeer, and others; hence this period may be described as his operatic period. With “The Flying Dutchman” Wagner enters a new stage of development. Henceforth he disregards the requirements of vulgar taste, or tastelessness. His works become the immediate effusion of his poetical inspiration, to which the forms of absolute music have gradually to give way. Ultimately he throws the whole apparatus of the opera, with its empty display of vocal skill and scenic spectacle, overboard. Even the name becomes odious to him; his new creations are termed “Music-dramas.” For the full appreciation of his vast schemes he looks to those to come rather than to the living generation. Hence the sobriquet – invented by his adversaries and adopted by him – “The Music of the Future.” In “The Flying Dutchman” these new tendencies appear as yet in an all but embryonic state; only one circumstance we will point out in connection with the subject. Wagner’s adversaries boldly assert that his reformatory deeds were the result of previous deliberate speculation, although the comparative dates of his dramatic and his theoretical works clearly prove the contrary. If a further proof of the spontaneity of his efforts were required, his mode of conceiving “The Flying Dutchman” would furnish it; for it was only the symbolic representation of his own personal sufferings at the time. Friendless and loveless amongst strangers, he could realise but too well the type of hero, who, doomed to roam on the wild waves of the ocean, longs for home and the redeeming love of woman. This personal character of his poetry he involuntarily transferred to his music, and was thus ultimately led to the breaking of forms insufficient to contain his impassioned utterances.

‘In the meantime his worldly prospects had undergone an unexpected favourable change. His “Rienzi” had been accepted for performance by the Dresden theatre, and in 1842 Wagner left Paris for that city in order to prepare his work for the stage. The first performance took place in October of the same year, and its brilliant success led to the composer’s engagement as conductor of the Royal Opera at Dresden.

‘It was natural that this first smile of fortune after so much adversity should have filled Wagner with elation. But he was not the man to rest on his laurels. During his stay at Paris he had become acquainted with the old story of Tannhäuser, the knightly singer who tarried in the mountain of Venus. This story, in connection with an imaginary prize-singing at Wartburg, the residence of the Dukes of Thuringia, struck him at once as eminently adapted for dramatic purposes. The impression was increased when, on his way to Dresden, he visited the romantic old castle surrounded by the nimbus of history and romance, and overlooking a wide and varied expanse of field and forest. The poem of “Tannhäuser” was written soon afterwards, even before the first performance of “Rienzi”; the music was finished by the end of 1844. The fundamental idea strikes one as somewhat similar to that of “The Flying Dutchman.” It is again the self-surrendering love of pure woman which in death releases the hero. Compared with its predecessor “Tannhäuser” marks a decided advance, both from a dramatic and musical point of view. The character of the hero, representing in its large typical features one of the deepest problems of human nature, stands boldly forth from the chiaroscuro of its romantic surroundings; and the abundance of melodious strains (some of them – as for instance, the celebrated March – of a broadly popular character) in “Tannhäuser” has, perhaps contributed more to the spreading of its author’s name than any of his other works.

‘At the first performance at Dresden, in 1845, the reception of “Tannhäuser” was, however, much less favourable than might have been expected. The public was evidently astonished and somewhat disappointed at this new language, so widely differing from the coarser accents of “Rienzi.” Altogether the prospects of Wagner’s popularity as an operatic writer seemed to dwindle more and more. The performance of his “Flying Dutchman” at Berlin had little more than a succès d’estime, while even that was scarcely obtained by “Rienzi” at Hamburg. The brief glimmer of hope was waning rapidly, and Wagner’s disappointment now all the more bitter for his previous experience of success. But even more than by his personal ill-fortune he was disgusted by the rank spirit of narrow-minded coterie with which the most prominent German theatres were infested. Neither the progress of his own nor that of any other true art could be expected under such circumstances. As years advanced, Wagner’s disappointment grew into a state of morbid despondency, in which change at any price seemed a relief. In this mood, and more from a sense of antagonism to things existing than from any distinct political persuasion, Wagner took an active part in the revolutionary risings of 1848 and 1849. The dream of liberty in Saxony and its unpleasant interruption by Prussian bayonets are matters of history. Wagner personally had to pay dearly for his short illusion. As a matter of course he lost official employment and was, moreover, compelled again to leave country and friends, a homeless exile. Before following him on his new wanderings, however, we must mention in a few words a work which owes its existence to the period immediately before the outbreak of the revolution: we are speaking of “Lohengrin,” the fourth of Wagner’s acknowledged operas, the music of which was finished in March, 1848. The story of the Knight of the Swan, originally founded on local traditions of the lower Rhine, Wagner owed to the same mediaeval compilation which had been the source of “Tannhäuser.” In his version it appears combined with the mystic tradition of the “Grail” and the spiritual order of knights guarding the holy vessel. Lohengrin, the son of Parcival, King of the Grail, leaves his blissful abode, to save Elsa, Princess of Brabant, from a false accusation of having killed her young brother. The love of Elsa and her deliverer forms the main subject of the drama, the tragic key-note being touched when Elsa, despite her promise of implicit faith, asks the name and abode of the mystical knight. This wild craving of Elsa to pierce the mystery which seems to shroud her husband from the warm clasp of her hand, is a touch of intense psychological truth. The style of Wagner’s music is quite in accordance with the elevated poetical intentions it serves to illustrate. The supernatural and natural elements are blended in his strains in the most marvellous manner, and rarely, if ever, is the impression marred by those purely theatrical effects which not infrequently occur in “Tannhäuser.”

‘On his flight from his country, Wagner turned first to Paris, where, as usual, disappointment lay in store for him. After a short stay in France he settled at Zurich, in Switzerland, and now, when the conductor’s bâton was wrenched from his hand, took up the pen of the critic to fight again the good fight of art in this new field of action. We must here again remind our readers that his great theoretical work, “Oper und Drama,” was written after his first four operas had been finished, and after even the plan of his largest and most advanced work, the “Nibelungen” trilogy had been conceived and partly executed. His dramas, so far from being fashioned according to a certain theory, were no more than the foundation on which that theory was constructed.

‘After his settling at Zurich, Wagner’s connection with the public performance of his works ceased almost entirely for ten years; but perhaps no time in his life had been more fertile in lasting results than this period of involuntary eclipse. After the many excitements of his public career, the seclusion of exile could not but be of beneficial consequence to a nature so apt to be entirely absorbed by the excitement of life and action. The first fruit of his contemplative retirement was the just-mentioned theoretical work, in which the vague aspirations of his earlier years came at last to a distinct conscious expression. But how little his creative power was affected by speculative exertions he soon proved by new dramatic works wider in scope and deeper in conception than anything he had done before. We are speaking of the gigantic trilogy, or, more correctly, tetralogy of the “Ring of the Nibelung,” in which the oldest tradition of Teutonic lore is embodied, and which for that reason alone may justly aspire to the place of the national work of art of Germany. Its dimensions are so colossal that ever so short a sketch even of the story would far exceed the limits of this notice. Wagner was occupied with its completion for more than twenty years, the book in its present form having been begun about 1851, and the last note of the music written in 1876. Twice, however, during this interval his attention was diverted from the “Nibelungen” by other artistic plans of no less import and beauty. The first of these was his dramatic treatment of the old tragic story of Tristan and Isolde, written and set to music between 1856–59. “Tristan and Isolde” is the fifth of Wagner’s acknowledged dramatic works, its first performance (at Munich, 1865) following that of “Lohengrin,” after an interval of fifteen years. The step in advance marked by it in its author’s development, and in that of dramatic music in general, is proportionate to this lapse of time. According to his own assertion, Wagner wrote it with the full concentrated power of his inspiration, freed at last from the fetters of conventional operatic forms, with which he had broken here definitely and irrevocably.

‘After the stated facts, it cannot surprise that this music-drama (for opera would be a decided misnomer) has become a bone of contention between the adherents of the liberal and conservative schools of music. Many people who greatly admire “certain things” in “Tannhäuser” and “Lohengrin” draw the line at “Tristan and Isolde,” which, on the other hand, is considered by the advanced party as the representative work of a new epoch in art. A musician’s position to this work may indeed be considered as decisive as to his general tendency towards the past or future.

‘The other important work carried on at the same time with the “Nibelungen” was a comic opera, the “Meistersinger von Nürnberg,” which was finished in October, 1869. The first draft of the book was written as early as 1845, immediately after the composition of “Tannhäuser,” with an intention of parodying the romantic singers of the middle ages by their bourgeois counterfeits, in the manner of the antique satyr-drama. The second version of the libretto, however, has been considerably modified. The worthy burghers of the beautiful German city appear in a more favourable light, the formal philistinism of their poetic doings being leavened by an admixture of true homely feeling. Hans Sachs, the poet and shoemaker, round whom, as their centre figure the numerous dramatis personae are grouped, represents the rising citizen of the sixteenth century in his strength and justified pride of work. The character throughout is noble and grand in conception, and ranks among the highest creations of Wagner’s muse. A romantic love-story of sweetest charm is interwoven with the scenes of busy citizen life, and in the treatment of the latter Wagner displayed throughout a power of humorous delineation for which his warmest admirers had scarcely given him credit. Wherever the “Meistersinger” has been adequately performed the success has been brilliant, and at the present day the work keeps its place on the répertoires of the great German theatres together with his first four operas. This is more than can be said of “Tristan,” which, although received with enthusiasm on two or three special occasions (in London, for instance), seems as yet too remote from the taste and understanding of ordinary amateurs to meet with general appreciation.

‘The remaining important facts of Wagner’s biography can be summed up in a few words. In 1861 he went to Paris to superintend the performance of “Tannhäuser,” which ended in the celebrated fiasco of the opera, owing perhaps more to political than to artistic prejudices. Previous to the fatal event three concerts at the Théâtre Italien, consisting of Wagner’s works, and conducted by himself, were received with enthusiasm, and amongst those who raised their voices in his defence against popular condemnation were men like Gautier, Champfleury and Charles Baudelaire – some small comfort to Wagner, perhaps, in his third and worst Parisian disappointment. In 1864 the art-loving King of Bavaria called Wagner to Munich, to assist in the reorganisation of the theatrical and musical institutions of that city. Here he resided for two years, and witnessed the excellent performance of “Tristan and Isolde,” under the direction of Dr. von Bülow.

‘It was in 1876 that Wagner’s indomitable energy was rewarded by a triumph such as no composer in the history of music had previously won. His colossal trilogy, “Der Ring des Nibelungen,” was brought to a hearing at Bayreuth, in presence of a unique assemblage of musicians and literary savants from all parts of the world. For more than a quarter of a century the work had been gradually assuming the form in which we know it at present, this evolutionary process continuing concurrently with other labours of an exhaustive nature. The foundation stone of the Wagner Theatre was laid in 1872, and the building is a durable testimony to the revolutionary ideas of its architect in the matter of theatrical construction. Nothing was wanting to render the production of the trilogy and unexampled success. The scenic arrangements, by Herr Brandt, of Dresden, were novel in design and beauty; the invisible orchestra, under Herr Richter, was pronounced by friends and foes alike inimitable; and the principal artists included the most eminent performers of the leading German opera-houses.

‘For some years the Wagnerian theory and practice had been gradually making way in England. “Tannhäuser” and “Lohengrin” had been promised again and again by the impressarii of the rival Italian Operas; but the lead was reserved for Mr. Wood, who produced “Der Fliegende Holländer” at the fag end of an unsuccessful season in 1870. In 1875 “Lohengrin” was given both at Covent Garden and Drury Lane, and, though barbarously mutilated, at once took a hold on the popular mind, which time has steadily increased. In the concert-room the Wagner Society, established for the purpose of sending material aid to Bayreuth, rendered excellent service to the cause; and the echo of triumph in August, 1876, resulted in a Wagner Festival of a strange and noteworthy but unsatisfactory character in the Albert Hall in the following summer. Eight concerts were given, and the composer, who attended in person, was the recipient of immense applause. After this the Wagnerian question slumbered for a time – if we except the conscientious and highly appreciated rendering of the early works under Mr. Carl Rosa, – but last year, by a strange series of coincidences, the whole of the master’s music-dramas, from “Rienzi” to “Die Götterdämmerung” were brought before the London public, and, despite greatly disadvantageous circumstances, their reception was highly favourable. Meanwhile Wagner had been at work upon “Parsifal,” a musical poem based on the “Grail” legends of Wolfram von Eschenbach and other mediaeval writers. The production of this singularly beautiful and impressive sacred drama in July last is too fresh in the recollection of musicians to render any details necessary. The performance was nearly as satisfactory as that of the “Ring of the Nibelung” six years previously, and the signal financial success gained during seventeen representations afforded a strong proof of the growth of the composer’s popularity during the intervening period. It had been Wagner’s custom for years to pass the winter in the South, and last autumn he took up his residence in Venice. Here he revived, on Christmas Eve, a symphony written at the age of nineteen, and a fortnight later he conducted a performance of the overture to “Zauberflöte.” Thus his latest musical experiences were closely associated with classical forms of composition, which he was popularly supposed to despise. It cannot be said that death has arrived prematurely for Richard Wagner. The news of his sudden departure is necessarily a shock to all who had followed his career with admiration for gifts so unparalleled; but he had well and worthily finished the work it was given him to do, and he was mercifully carried away before the inevitable period of mental decay had arrived to mar the lustre of his reputation.’

Musical Times, March 1883