Richard Wagner | Page 2

began to turn round. For Wagner there is
an ample excuse: he honestly thought it necessary to spread his ideas
abroad; his aims and intentions had been so misunderstood, and so
stupidly, wickedly, recklessly misrepresented, that he did not believe
his music-dramas would ever find acceptance until he had cleared the
way by explaining himself. Little good came of it--in fact, the only
good result was that some of his writings fell into the hands of Ludwig
II of Bavaria, and thus led to the ending of his days of misery, and
indirectly to Bayreuth. For the commentators no word of extenuation
can be said. Those, perhaps, of the period 1867-77 were justified in
pressing their master's claims on the public at large, for the support of
the public at large had to be won, and the best way of winning it

seemed to lie in advocating those claims, in season and out of season,
through the agency of the newspaper-press; but the rest of the herd
have proved themselves an unqualified nuisance and a hindrance to a
right understanding of Wagner.
This herd I would not willingly join. In the following pages no general
theory concerning Wagner will be found. I shall indulge in no
theorisings whatever, but stick to the facts, facts which can now be
ascertained with certainty. My endeavour will be to tell a plain,
unvarnished tale of what Wagner did and of what he suffered, of the
environment amidst which he grew up and laboured and struggled: with
all that he said and wrote I shall deal as briefly as may be, regarding his
endless loquacity of mouth and pen as of interest only when it throws
real light on the artist. Least of all shall I waste the reader's patience on
the morals that may be drawn from his musical works. The moral to be
drawn from his prose works is simply that a man, even a stupendously
great man, may write far too much; the moral to be drawn from his
musical works every man may find out for himself: for myself, I have
found none, any more than I could ever find a moral in a play of
Æschylus or Sophocles or Shakespeare.
There are plenty of authorities for the statements now to be made. We
have the exhaustive Life by Glasenapp and W. Ashton Ellis; then there
is Wagner's own work, My Life, lately translated into English; finally
there are the Letters. Many of these are of no interest or value whatever,
dealing only with details concerning scores and proof-sheets and petty
money matters. Many, on the other hand, notably those to Uhlig, are
invaluable to every one who wishes to understand Wagner. Extensive
use is made of them in this book, though, as they are easily accessible, I
have forborne to quote more than is absolutely necessary. My Life I
think but little of, and have not relied greatly on it.
Wagner the reformer will receive no lengthy consideration. He did not
"reform" the opera form--the opera form of Mozart and Weber needed
no reforming--he simply developed it. He did reform operatic
performances by insisting on precision and intelligence in place of
slovenliness and stupidity, on enthusiasm for art in place of stolid

indifference; and he did as much in the concert-room. I shall not
theorize about these matters, but point out what he achieved by making
a continuous appeal to indubitable, indisputable facts.
I am indebted to Messrs. H. Grevel & Co. for kind permission to print
extracts from Mr. Shedlock's translation of Wagner's Letters, and to
Messrs. Novello for similar permission regarding quotations from the
libretti of the operas. Two words may be said about the quotations, both
words and music, of the operas: in some cases, when I could neither
find nor make an adequate translation of verses, I have stuck to the
original German; with regard to the music, I have given as little as
possible. Both musical and verbal citations are meant for
reference--there is only one exception, the Sailors' Song from the
opening of Tristan. Catalogues of Wagner's themes have for long been
issued by several publishers; but they are of small assistance in helping
one to understand Wagner.
J.F.R.

CONTENTS
I EARLY LIFE
II EARLY BOYHOOD
III EARLY LIFE (_continued_)
IV JUVENILE WORKS
V PARIS
VI 'RIENZI' AND 'THE FLYING DUTCHMAN'
VII DRESDEN
VIII 'TANNHÄUSER'

IX 'LOHENGRIN'
X EXILE
XI 'TRISTAN AND ISOLDA'
XII 'THE MASTERSINGERS OF NUREMBERG'
XIII KING LUDWIG
XIV 'THE NIBELUNG'S RING' AND THE RHINEGOLD'
XV 'THE VALKYRIE'
XVI 'SIEGFRIED'
XVII 'THE DUSK OF THE GODS'
XVIII 'PARSIFAL'; THE END; THE MAN
INDEX

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PORTRAIT OF WAGNER (_Photogravure_)
WAGNER'S BIRTHPLACE: THE SIGN OF THE RED AND WHITE
LION, ON THE BRÜHL, LEIPZIG
THE WAGNER THEATRE AT BAYREUTH
LISZT (_From