Old Fogy | Page 7

and flattering. Wagner proceeded to make it so by labeling his
themes, leading motives. Each one meant something. And the Germans,
the vainest race in Europe, rose like catfish to the bait. Wagner, in
effect, told them that his music required brains--Aha! said the German,
he means me; that his music was not cheap, pretty, and sensual, but
spiritual, lofty, ideal--Oho! cried the German, he means me again. I am
ideal. And so the game went merrily on. Being the greatest egotist that
ever lived, Wagner knew that this music could not make its way
without a violent polemic, without extraneous advertising aids. So he
made a big row; became socialist, agitator, exile. He dragged into his
music and the discussion of it, art, politics, literature, philosophy, and
religion. It is a well-known fact that this humbugging comedian had
written the Ring of the Nibelungs before he absorbed the
Schopenhauerian doctrines, and then altered the entire scheme so as to
imbue--forsooth!--his music with pessimism.
Nor was there ever such folly, such arrant "faking" as this! What has
philosophy, religion, politics to do with operatic music? It cannot
express any one of them. Wagner, clever charlatan, knew this, so he
worked the leading-motive game for all it was worth. Realizing the
indefinite nature of music, he gave to his themes--most of them
borrowed without quotation marks--such titles as Love-Death;
Presentiment of Death; Cooking motive--in Siegfried; Compact theme,
etc., etc. The list is a lengthy one. And when taxed with originating all
this futile child's-play he denied that he had named his themes. Pray,
then, who did? Did von Wolzogen? Did Tappert? They worked directly
under his direction, put forth the musical lures and decoys and the
ignorant public was easily bamboozled. Simply mention the esoteric,
the mysterious omens, signs, dark designs, and magical symbols, and
you catch a certain class of weak-minded persons.
Wagner knew this; knew that the theater, with its lights, its scenery, its
costumes, orchestra, and vocalizing, was the place to hoodwink the
"cultured" classes. Having a pretty taste in digging up old fables and
love-stories, he saturated them with mysticism and far-fetched musical

motives. If The Flying Dutchman is absurd in its story--what possible
interest can we take in the Salvation of an idiotic mariner, who doesn't
know how to navigate his ship, much less a wife?--what is to be said of
Lohengrin? This cheap Italian music, sugar-coated in its sensuousness,
the awful borrowings from Weber, Marschner, Beethoven, and
Gluck--and the story! It is called "mystic." Why? Because it is not, I
suppose. What puerile trumpery is that refusal of a man to reveal his
name! And Elsa! Why not Lot's wife, whose curiosity turned her into a
salt trust!
You may notice just here what the Wagnerians are pleased to call the
Master's "second" manner. Rubbish! It is a return to the Italians. It is a
graft of glistening Italian sensuality upon Wagner's strenuous study of
Beethoven's and Weber's orchestras. Tannhäuser is more manly in its
fiber. But the style, the mixture of styles; the lack of organic unity, the
blustering orchestration, and the execrable voice-killing vocal writing!
The Ring is an amorphous impossibility. That is now critically admitted.
It ruins voices, managers, the public purse, and our patience. Its stories
are indecent, blasphemous, silly, absurd, trivial, tiresome. To talk of the
Ring and Beethoven's symphonies is to put wind and wisdom in the
same category. Wagner vulgarized Beethoven's symphonic
methods--noticeably his powers of development. Think of utilizing that
magnificent and formidable engine, the Beethoven symphonic method,
to accompany a tinsel tale of garbled Norse mythology with all sorts of
modern affectations and morbidities introduced! It is maddening to any
student of pure, noble style. Wagner's Byzantine style has helped
corrupt much modern art.
Tristan und Isolde is the falsifying of all the pet Wagner doctrines--Ah!
that odious, heavy, pompous prose of Wagner. In this erotic comedy
there is no action, nothing happens except at long intervals; while the
orchestra never stops its garrulous symphonizing. And if you prate to
me of the wonderful Wagner orchestration and its eloquence, I shall
quarrel with you. Why wonderful? It never stops, but does it ever say
anything? Every theme is butchered to death. There is endless
repetition in different keys, with different instrumental nuances, yet of
true, intellectual and emotional mood-development there is no trace;

short-breathed, chippy, choppy phrasing, and never ten bars of a big,
straightforward melody. All this proves that Wagner had not the power
of sustained thoughts like Mozart or Beethoven. And his orchestration,
with its daubing, its overladen, hysterical color! What a humbug is this
sensualist, who masks his pruriency back of poetic and philosophical
symbols. But it is always easy to recognize the cloven foot. The
headache and jaded nerves we have after a night