The Perfect Wagnerite | Page 7

the
revolutionary Wagner of 1848 are taught neither by the education nor
the experience of English and American gentlemen-amateurs, who are
almost always political mugwumps, and hardly ever associate with
revolutionists. The earlier attempts to translate his numerous pamphlets
and essays into English, resulted in ludicrous mixtures of pure
nonsense with the absurdest distorsions of his ideas into the ideas of the
translators. We now have a translation which is a masterpiece of

interpretation and an eminent addition to our literature; but that is not
because its author, Mr. Ashton Ellis, knows the German dictionary
better than his predecessors. He is simply in possession of Wagner's
ideas, which were to them inconceivable.
All I pretend to do in this book is to impart the ideas which are most
likely to be lacking in the conventional Englishman's equipment. I
came by them myself much as Wagner did, having learnt more about
music than about anything else in my youth, and sown my political
wild oats subsequently in the revolutionary school. This combination is
not common in England; and as I seem, so far, to be the only publicly
articulate result of it, I venture to add my commentary to what has
already been written by musicians who are no revolutionists, and
revolutionists who are no musicians. G. B. S.

Preliminary Encouragements The Ring of the Niblungs The Rhine
Gold Wagner as Revolutionist The Valkyries Siegfried Siegfried as
Protestant Night Falls On The Gods Why He Changed His Mind
Wagner's Own Explanation The Music of The Ring The Old and the
New Music The Nineteenth Century The Music of the Future Bayreuth

THE PERFECT WAGNERITE

PRELIMINARY ENCOURAGEMENTS
A few of these will be welcome to the ordinary citizen visiting the
theatre to satisfy his curiosity, or his desire to be in the fashion, by
witnessing a representation of Richard Wagner's famous Ring of the
Niblungs.
First, The Ring, with all its gods and giants and dwarfs, its
water-maidens and Valkyries, its wishing-cap, magic ring, enchanted
sword, and miraculous treasure, is a drama of today, and not of a
remote and fabulous antiquity. It could not have been written before the
second half of the nineteenth century, because it deals with events
which were only then consummating themselves. Unless the spectator
recognizes in it an image of the life he is himself fighting his way
through, it must needs appear to him a monstrous development of the
Christmas pantomimes, spun out here and there into intolerable lengths
of dull conversation by the principal baritone. Fortunately, even from

this point of view, The Ring is full of extraordinarily attractive episodes,
both orchestral and dramatic. The nature music alone--music of river
and rainbow, fire and forest--is enough to bribe people with any love of
the country in them to endure the passages of political philosophy in
the sure hope of a prettier page to come. Everybody, too, can enjoy the
love music, the hammer and anvil music, the clumping of the giants,
the tune of the young woodsman's horn, the trilling of the bird, the
dragon music and nightmare music and thunder and lightning music,
the profusion of simple melody, the sensuous charm of the
orchestration: in short, the vast extent of common ground between The
Ring and the ordinary music we use for play and pleasure. Hence it is
that the four separate music-plays of which it is built have become
popular throughout Europe as operas. We shall presently see that one of
them, Night Falls On The Gods, actually is an opera.
It is generally understood, however, that there is an inner ring of
superior persons to whom the whole work has a most urgent and
searching philosophic and social significance. I profess to be such a
superior person; and I write this pamphlet for the assistance of those
who wish to be introduced to the work on equal terms with that inner
circle of adepts.
My second encouragement is addressed to modest citizens who may
suppose themselves to be disqualified from enjoying The Ring by their
technical ignorance of music. They may dismiss all such misgivings
speedily and confidently. If the sound of music has any power to move
them, they will find that Wagner exacts nothing further. There is not a
single bar of "classical music" in The Ring--not a note in it that has any
other point than the single direct point of giving musical expression to
the drama. In classical music there are, as the analytical programs tell
us, first subjects and second subjects, free fantasias, recapitulations, and
codas; there are fugues, with counter-subjects, strettos, and pedal points;
there are passacaglias on ground basses, canons ad hypodiapente, and
other ingenuities, which have, after all, stood or fallen by their
prettiness as much as the simplest folk-tune. Wagner is