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R h d W g dth M o th F t

History and Aesthetics

Francis Hue er



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RICHAED WAGNEEAM) THE

MUSIC OF THE FUTURE.

EISTOEY AND ESTHETICS.

BY

FRANZ HUEFFER.

LONDON:

CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.

1874.

Ths Bight qf Translation is Reserved.



P E E FA C E .

A CONSIDERABLE part of the contents of the pre-sent volume has been previously published in the'Fortnightly Eeview;' a smaller portion, consist-ing chiefly of the letters of K. Schumann, appearedin the l Academy.' Everything, however, hasbeen recast and made subservient to the purposesof this book, about which the author now begsleave to make a few introductory remarks.

Musicians and theorists of all colours (for now-a-days one must distinguish the different shades ofparty opinion, in music as well as in politics orreligion) agree in the one point, that, by the worksof Beethoven's latter years, and especially by theNinth Symphony of that master, a new phase ismarked in the history of their art. In the last-mentioned work, or, to speak quite accurately, inits three first movements, it was finally shown, howfar music in its separate condition could go inachieving the ultimate aim of all art,i.e., the render-



iv PREFACE.

ing of the emotions of the hum an hea rt. I t may in

this respect be called the triumph of absolute music;and, indeed, no symphonic workof a later periodcan be said to have surpassed, or even equalled inbeauty and power of expression, this gigantic effortof a master-mind. B u t in this ve ry splendour of

artistic perfection we indistinctly, but no less cer-tainly, feel the want of something that remainsun ex pre sse d; and by acknowledging this wan t, asfounded in the nature of music itself, and intro-ducing into the last movement of his D m inor

symphony the human word, as a firm basis for hislofty aspirations, Beethoven has at th e same tim eushered in a new period of his art.

To define the sesthetical foundation of th is newidea in music, and at the same time follow th e course

of its growth, will be my chief task in the followingpages. Here I will only try to indicate in a fewwords its most general characteristics, and first ofall to fix its nondescript airiness into a local habi-tation and a nam e. The new movement, therefore,

which arose after and, to a gre at ex ten t,through Beethoven's reformatory deeds, we willhenceforth call the period ofpoetic music (the strictdefinition of which term I must defer to anotheroccasion); or, in case the reader should prefer an



PREFACE. v

old to a new-coined expression, we will occasionally

apply the generally acknowledgedsobriquet of theMusic of the Future.

The poetic principle, alluded to, may be dividedinto a lyrical and a dramatic part; which dis-tinction, translated into musical terms, will lead us

to the two important forms of theMusic-Drama andthe Song. At the same time it seems to me thatonly in these two kinds of developmentmusic showsa decided advance upon Beethoven's creations, aremark which, of course, is made without any

derogatory tendency with regard to the instru-mental works of modern composers. In manycases these have displayed individual beauties ofthe highest order without, however, adding essen-tially new features to the symphonic form, as

established by Beethoven.As a further means of subdivision, I have headedthe single chapters of my work with the repre-sentative names of Eichard Wagner for the dra-matic, and Franz Schubert, Kobert Schumann,Franz Liszt, and Eobert Franz for the differentshades of the lyrical phase of modern music.



I.

\xumu.

" Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of heaven's joy,Sphere-born harmonious sisters, Voice and V erse,Wed your divine sounds, and mix'd power employ,Dead things with inbreath'd sense able to pierce." *

Milton.



CHAPTER 1.

EICHAED WAGNEE.

1.

I F I were asked for a strik ing poin t of distinc-tion between m usicians of th e old and modernschools, I should m ention, first of all, thei r essen-tially altered position w ith rega rd to literature in

general. D ur ing the last century, a musician wasexpected to study, from his very childhood, allthe intricacies, both theoretical and practical, ofhis art, but beyond this his education, as a rule,showed the most deplorable deficiencies; and when-

ever he had to w rite on ordinary foolscap, ins teadof the accustomed staff of five lines, his handseemed to shake and his thought to stammer.Mozart, for instance, seems to have been decidedly

B



a RICHARD WAGNER.

no t above th e average level of middle-class education

a t his t i m e ; and to connect the idea of a th inkerwith good old "papa Haydn," who, whi le com-posing his Creation, used to mumble a couple of

' Ave M ari a 's ' when the source of his inspirationceased to flow, seems grotesquely incongruous.

Indeed, with the sole exception of Gluck, no first-rate musician of the eighteenth century can be

named who would not have shrunk from the ideaof giving literary evidence as to the fundamentalprinciples of his own art ; a phenomenon which,

in most cases, finds its explanation in the men-tioned circumstance of an exclusively technicaleducation. Beethoven's yo uth also was passedin a

purely professional atmosphere; but his powerfulmind soon expanded w ith interes ts of a wider

range. Plutarch was his favourite author, andverses of Homer were frequently found, inter-spersed w ith those puzzling economical calcu la-tions and musical sketches which covered the

walls of his room and the scraps of paper on his

writing-table. His sesthetical thoughts alsodis-play the intuitive depth of his great na ture. Sti l lthe language of illiterate awkwardness in whichthey were clad, as far, at least, as we may jud°-e



RICHARD WAGNER. 3

from Schindler's account, distinctly showsa want

of early training.We receive a very different impression as we

t u rn to the literary capabilities of representativemodern composers. It is true that Mendelssohnrefrained, on principle, from untraditional theo-

retic utterances, although the fluent grace of hisstyle shows to great advantage in his privateletters. B ut Schumann went through a regularcourse of university studies, and after that was

the editor of a musical journal for many years,

before his name as a composer became knownbeyond the circle of his immediate admirers. The

literary style of Liszt too reflects clearly the

suppleness and grace of his refined genius, al-

though, in his case, one might suppose that the

unequalled mastery of his instrument, which hedisplayed as enfant prodige from his earliest youth,would have engrossed the attention even of the

most precocious intellect.

These few remarks seemed requiredto assist the

reader in seeing in its true light one of the nu-merous accusations which Wagner's innumerableenemies have raised against his creative power. I t

is grounded on the fact of his having investigated

B 2



4 RICHARD WAGNER.

the metaphysical and historical sides of his

art.The two faculties of speculation and execution—

these wise men asse rt— are never found combinedin the same individuality, and on the stre ng th ofthis axiom, they prove a priori that the author

of Oper und Drama cannot but produce works ofcold deliberation, w hich, based on theo retica lspeculation, may occasionally attain effects ofskill, bu t m ust needs lack th e life of spon taneousproduction. To refute the argu m ents of such

theorists by the intrinsic value of "Wagner's crea-tions would be in vain, as these appeal altog eth erto a higher kind of receptive faculty, than is tobe found amongst the high-p riests of o rthodoxPhilistinism. Such men never will or can con-

ceive that, in art, as well as in life, we mustdistinguish between the state of Paradisiac in-nocence and that of self-conscious knowledge.In the former the feelings are poured forth w ithalmost childlike naivete; and if the mind from

which the y flow draws its sources from th e inex -haustible fountain of beauty, they will possess allthe charms of virg inity. M ozart m ight be nam edas the representative genius of this kind of de-



RICHARD WAGNER. 5

lightfully fresh spontaneity. Unfortunately, the

t imes of juven ile enjoyment have been changedfor the manhood of deeper thought and sorrow.W e have tasted the bitter fruit of knowledge, andthe artists of our latter days must have passedwith us through the furnace of "fierce and un-

fathomable thought," purifyingin it the inarticu-late longings of the soul, to the not less passionatebut conscious strife for ideal aims. Beethoven andWagner are the artists by whose names the

philosophical, and therefore essentially modern,

epoch of music will be recognised. By these re-marks, however, it shall by no means be impliedth a t the works of Wagner or Beethoven are not

the emanation of spontaneous production, but havebeen fashioned after a certain scheme, the result

of previous speculation. In Wagner's case thefutility of such an accusation can easily be provedby chronological dates. He himself has told us

how " unintentionally " {iinvors'dtzliclt) he enteredupon his career asa reformer in the Flying Dutch-

man. This work, Tannhduser, and Lohengrin werefinished, and even the scheme of the words of

Siegfried and the Meistersingerconceived and partlyexecuted, before his first theoretical work, the



6 RICHARD WAGNER.

Kunstwerk der Zuhinft, saw the light. It is indeed

one of the most interesting studies of musicalhistory to see how the new idea in all its con-sequences grew upon Wagner, and how he em-bodied it unconsciously in his dramatic creations,which only afterwards, like the worksof any other

composer, served him as material for his re-searches. The great importanceof these theoreticwritings lies, for us, in the fact of their being theonly way in which a full understanding of Wa g -ner's aims, and further, of those of modern music

in general, can be obtained.Germany is the country of music and philosophy,

but the philosophy of music has been treated bymost of its deepest thinkers with an undeservedand equally unaccoun table neg lect. Eve na man

of Leibnitz's pre-eminence saw in music only an" exercitium ar ith m eti cs occultum nescientissenum erare an im i," although th e worksof his con-temporaries, Bach and H and el, m ight have ta ugh thim better. H eg el's views on the same subject can-

not be said to enligh ten the mind to any considerableextent, and in our own time Friedrich Vischer,the"Aesthetiker" par excellence,confessed his own igno-rance of music in a double way, first by not treating



RICHARD WAGNER. 7

it himself in his principal work, and secondly

by choosing D r. H anslick as his sub stitute. A rth urSchopenhauer, the greatest thinker Germanyhas

produced since Kant, was the first to pierce the

clouds hang ing around this most ethereal ar t. Thereis a certain likeness between the characters of W ag-

ner and Schopenhauer as w riters, and equally be tweenthe positions which they takein the history of theirrespective branches of hum an development. Bo thacknowledge one and only one, of their predecessorsas thei r superior, whose ideas they are destinedto

carry out. In this exclusive adm iration of Beethovenand K an t, on the pa rt of "Wagner and Schopenhauer,lies at the same time the causefor their frequentlyunjust contempt of epigonic aspirations and the bitter-ness of the ir critical utterances. Perha ps such one-

sidedness and misunderstanding of individualitiesnot strictly akin to their own is inevitably the

doom of creative minds; but only too often it

leads to a fatal isolation from the stream of con-temporary progress. The bitte r resentment onthe

pa rt of the objects concerned is another disadvantageof such reformatory zeal. The flaying of Marsyas,—wretched singer though he may have been ,—seemed to me always the least enviable part of



RICHARD WAGNER. 9

might appear to beings with other meansof per-

ception than ours, and not limited by the notionsof space and time, nothing is revealed to us.

Even these notions originate, accordingto Kant,in a certain predisposition of the brain, by meansof which we discern the co-existence and succession

of different phenomena and the phenomena them-selves. A ga ins t the absolute idealismof Berkeley,K an t holds that , outside th e hum an Ego, th e re m ustexist an independent something to act upon the

ind ividual. Schopenhauer, star ting from this basis,

proceeds to the further assertion that this some-thing hitherto nondescript exists onlyin so far as

i t has the " w i l l of existence; " in fact, that it is

nothing else but this will in its different forms andphases. The highest and last of these phases is

the human volition, made consciousof its beingand aims by the intellect, and comprising in its

microcosm the universe out of which it grows, and

from which it differs gradually but not essentially.The first manifestation of this will, Schopenhauer

proceeds, takes place in the ideas in Plato's sense,—tha t is, in the archetypal forms which fashionthe cosmos, and of which the single phenomenaare further subdivisions. It is the aim of all arts



io RICHARD WAGNER.

to express the eternal essence of things by means

of these Platonic ideas, only music takesin thisrespect an exceptional position. A rts like pa in tingand sculpture embody these ideas,as conceived bythe art ist through the medium of phenomena,the

ideal value of which .he shows, but only by the

reproduction of their actual appearance. Eve ninpoetry the realities of life and the visible wondersof the world, with their symbolic meaning, forman essential ingred ient. M usic,on the contrary,does not want, nor even allow of, a realisticcon-

ception. There is no sound in nature fit to servethe musician as a model, or to supply him withmore than an occasional suggestion for his sublimepurpose. He approaches the original sources of

existence more closely than all other art ists—

nay, even than Nature herself. His harmoniesand melodies are, to speak w ith Schopenhauer,"as immediate and direct an objectificationor copyof the will of the world as the world itself is,

as the ideas are of which the universe of th ings

is the phenomenon. M usic is not the copy of the

ideas, like the other arts, but a representationof

the cosmical will co-ordinate with the ideas them-selves." In this sense the musical composeris the



RICHARD WAGNER. n

only creative artis t. W hi le the painter or sculptor

must borrow the raiment for his idea from thehuman form or the landscape, the musicianis alonewith his inspiration. He only listens to the voiceof the spirit of the world, or, which is the same,of his own spirit speaking to him as in a dream;

for it is only in dreams, when the soul is not dis-turbed by the impression of th e senses, that sucha state of absorption is attainable, and Vogl's say-ing of Schubert, that he composed in a state ofclairvoyance, m ay be applied to all creative musi-

cians.These are, in brief, the fundamental principles

which Schopenhauer, first among philosophers, haslaid down for the metaphysical essence of our art,and which "Wagner has adopted, without any modi-

fications of importance, in his lately publishedpamphlet on Beethoven.

It ought, however, to be added that in thefinal conclusions with regard to the concreteap-

pearances of musical genius, which both the artistand philosopher have founded on th is common basis,they differ w idely. Schopenhauer seemsto haveconsidered music as an art of entirely independentand self-sufficient means of expression, the free



12 RICHARD WAGNER.

movement of which could on ly suffer from a too

close alliance w ith worded poetry . H e even goesto the length of highly commending Eossini 's wayof proceeding, in which the words of the text aretreated quite en bagatelle, and in which, therefore," music speaks its own language so pu re ly and

distinctly that it does not require the words at all,and has its full effect even if performed by instru-ments on ly." Such a sentence cannot bu t surp riseus from the same lips, which have uttered the pro-found thoughts referred to on the foregoing pages.

Bu t the philosopher has tha t in common w ith th epoet, that his abstract contemplations arise from anintuitive consciousness, which is all but indepen-dent of, and not always applicable to, the resultsof actual knowledge.

The philosophical side of the question beingthu s stated, we have now to follow W ag ne r on hisown grounds, in order to witness the bearing of thisspeculation on the historical progress of our art.The theoretical works of W agne r, to the con tentsof which I wish to introduce the reader in thenext following pages, are considerable in numberand variety of subject-matter. In glancing th roug hthe complete edition of his writings, lately pub-



RICHARD WAGNER. IJ

lished in nine volumes, one is struck with admira-

tion at the range of an intellectual power which,greatly exceeding the limits of one art, lays a

firm hold on almost all the moving currents of

contemporary thought, overpowering their hetero-geneous motions, and leading them with an un-

equalled force of concentration to the one aim ofits own asp iration. Politics, religion, history , andnational economy are treated with the same sove-reign power of centripetal rotation, in so far as

the y may tend to the desired ideal ofa new phase of

art, and of national and individual life regeneratedthrough means of it. For the artist is to be thelonged-for Messiah, to deliver future generations fromthe fetters of custom and prejudice, andI need notadd that this artist is to speakto the nations from

the hallowed boards of a truly popular stage, andthat his words, shall be accompanied by the inspir-ing strains of the divinest of arts, music. " Eebushumanis inest quidam circulus,"we may exclaimwith the great Koman historian, when, in thisboldest dream of our latte r days, we perceive aclose affinity to the Greek drama and its vitalreciprocity with the lifeof the nat ion; an affinitywhich, as we shall see hereafter, even extendsto



14 RICHARD WAGNER.

the internal economy of this drama and its two

most important compounds.It would, of course, lead us too far to follow

"Wagner's thought into all its collateral ramifica-tions. The present writer will th in k himselfhappy if he should succeed, in condensing into

an organic whole the abundance of speculativematerial, as far as it relates more immedi-ately to the subject in point, i.e., the relativepositions of music and poetry in their unitedefforts.

2 .

From the entirely supernatural character of

music as established by Schopenhauer, Wagnerproceeds to conclude its comparative independence

of the conditions under which the visible worldacts upon our senses; that is, of space and t ime.In an art of sound, space is altogether out of the

question; but even time can in a certain sensebe dispensed with in what is most musical in

music—harmony. A harmonic chord, as such, is

absolutely unmeasurable by t i m e ; and in pieceslike the divine works of Palestrina, where the

gradual progress from one harmonious combination



RICHARD WAGNER. 15

to another is scarcely perceptible, the consciousness

•of change, and with it tha t of passing time itself,almost ceases, and we seem to have entered, underthe master's guidance, the quiet realms of divinenon-ex istence . B u t music could not always remainin this state of passive calm, and as soon as its

other most important element, rhythm, is intro-duced, everything changes suddenly, and we areat

once transported into the restless waves of t imeand progress. For, as we know from Aristoxenos,rhythm is nothing but a regular return of shorter

and longer portions of time, as manifested by amovement performed in this time, the object of the

movement in music being the succession of melo-dious intervals—i.e., the fieXos, or tune. Melody,therefore, is the daughter of the quiet repose in

harmony and the throbbing motionof rhythm,andboth elements are equally necessary for its beauti-ful grow th. Still, rhythm beingan intruder in therealm of pure music, the compositions which,like dances, are exclusively founded on it m ust ' be

of a lower order than where the melody grows outof harmonious relations. W ith these thre eele-

ments, viz., harmony, rhythm, and melody, we

have exhausted the means of expression which



16 RICHARD WAGNER.

music proper can call its own. Also aboutits aims

and objects there can beno doubt, after the forego-ing rem arks. M usic's own domain is the reig n of u n -impaired impulse,—the tenderest vibrationsof willand passion,—as the immediate effluence of whichwe have to consider it. But its origin, as well as

the character of its instruments, excludes it fromthe sphere of actual realities, and preventsit fromrivalling articulate speechin the dist inct renderingof emotions.

The purest and most adequate organ of our

art in its independent state, is instrumentalmusic, the separate existence of which is of

comparatively recent date, beginning with Bach,and ending (if we may believe "Wagner) withBeethoven's Ninth Symphony. In this, even the

supreme genius of Beethoven confesses its in-

ability of expressing its highest aspiration in musicalone; it calls poetry to its assistance, and the

words of Schiller's ' Freude, ' added to Beethoven'senchanted strains, sound, as it were, the death-knell of music in its separate condition, and the

rise of a new epoch, in which music and poetrycan be severed no more. W it h this view we

are able to agree only in a modified way



RICHARD WAGNER. 17

but will not at present interrupt the progress

of W ag ne r's ideas by untim ely deviation. Thecombination of music and poetry, "Wagner pro-ceeds, to which Beethoven repaired when theinsufficiency of his musical means became obvious,was of course not invented or used for the first

tim e by him. It , on the contrary, preceded theartificial separation of the two ar ts. The traditionsof all nations speak of th e poet and singer as thesame person, and the mere fact of the human voicebeing at the same time one of the most perfect

musical instruments, seems to indicate the organicnecess ity of such a combination, as divined in th elines of the ' Passionate Pilg rim '—

" If music and sweet poetry agreeAs they must needs, the sister and the brother.

# # #One G-od is God of both as poets feign."

Besides, the metrical element which exists in anembryonic and all but latent state in the spokenlanguage , can be interpre ted and displayed in all

its charms only by the aid of real melody, which,as it were, must grow out of the rhythmical struc-tu re of verse and stanza. In their ideal aims thetwo sister arts form also a necessary complement

c



18 RICHARD WAGNER.

to each other. The free express ion of intense and

abundant feeling in poetry is but too often en-cumbered by the speculative structureof language,while, on the other hand, the soaring flight ofmusic, lacks a starting-point of strictly defined andrecognisable pathos. M usic and poetry, therefore,

by both the ir powers and weaknessesare referredto each other's aid; and the results of their com-bination will be of a higher order than is attainableby either of them in the ir separate state. On th eother hand, it cannot be denied that their close

union will be made possible only by a mutua lcompromise, in which either of them has to resigncertain peculiarities of its own in favour of thecommon aim.

The way in which such a compromise has been

attempted has varied considerably in differenttimes and nations. In the lyrical parts of theGreek tragedy (for it is to the drama, as thshighest result of both music and poetry,that we have now to turn our chief attention)

music, as we know, took a prominent part* soprominent, indeed, that the metrical structure of

the choric pieces can be understood only from its

connection w ith song. Th is importance appearsin



RICHARD WAGNER. ig

a still stronger light, if with Professor Nietzsche,*

we consider music in the antique drama as therepresentative of the Bacchic element which formsthe wild ecstatic undercurrent of the measuredApollonian self-consciousness of the spoken dia-

logue, and in this way becomes the symbol of tha t

most mysterious phase of Greek and, in a widersense, of human nature. Still the essentiallyrhythmical nature of Greek composition couldnot

be favourable to the flow of melody, which, as wehave seen, depends for its more elevated effects

chiefly on harmonious beauty. Unfortunately thesense for harmony seems to have been little in

accordance with the other accomplishments of the

most artistic nation of the world. Even if we

follow the most favourable accounts, the knowledge

of polyphony was all but wanting among theGreeks, and the imperfect nature of their scales,wi thout the major seventh, betrays, at least ac-

cording to our notions, a deplorable want of musicalear. U nde r these circumstances it scarcely re-

quired the powers of JEschylus or Sophocles to

* In his interesting work, Die Geburt der Tragodie ausdem Oeiste der Musik (The Birth of the Tragedy from theSpirit of M usic). Leipsic: Fritzsch.

c 2



20 RICHARD WAGNER.

settle the question of preponderance in the Greek

tragedy in favour of poetry, which had all th eadvantages of technical perfection in the hands ofmen of unm atchable genius. I t remains to ac-knowledge th e keen perception of the relation s ofthe two arts shown by the Greeks in this treat-

ment, in which music, imperfect tho ug h it m ightbe, was applied to its true purpose of intensifyingthe rhythmical power and ideal pathos of words.

This state of things was entirely changed in thenext important phase of dramatic music which we

encounter in Italy, about the beginning of the seven-teen th century. Like the renaissance of the finearts, the Ita lian opera was, or p retended to be, arevival of antique traditions . B u t th e affinitybetween the two epochs in regard to this was of a

very superficial character. M usic th is tim e en teredthe lists under much more favourable auspices.Firs t of all, the language it had to deal w ith hadlost its rhythm ical character entirely ; in poetry amere coun ting of syllables had taken th e place of

metrical accentuation, and music was at full libertyto supply the w an t of arsis and thesis accord ingto its own conditions. The charac ter of m odernfeeling was likewise m ore akin to th e intense, b u t



RICHARD WAGNER. 21

vague and ind istinct natu re of musical expression.

I n its way through the middle ages, with theirromantic conception of love, and the mysteriousterrors and charms of Christian revelation, man-kind had lost that firm grasp of realities whichalways formed the substratumof the loftiest flights

of Greek genius . There were certain vibrationsof feeling in this longing for the supernaturalwhich would not allow of the limits of words, andabsolutely required the more congenial raim ent ofpu re sound. A t the epoch we speak of the grea t poets

of Italy had passed away, and the void whichhadbeen left even by their mighty deeds now remainedto be filled up by the musician, whose means wereby this time more equal to his grea t task. For hisart had now passed out of the stage of childish

stam m ering. The homophonous innocenceof theDoric and Mixolydic scales had left only a dimtradition. Polyhy m nia had undergone the uncouthat tempts at discipline which we are used to attri-bute to Hucbald. She had learnt from Guittone

di Arezzo to fix her thoughts in indelible signs,and two centuries' training in the school of theNetherlands had taught her the powers of poly-phonous figuration. W hen th is school reachedits



22 RICHARD WAGNER.

climax in the great Orlando di Lasso, and in

Goudimel's pupil, the divine Roman, Palestrina,music had not to shun comparison with any of the

sister arts.The superior position which it was thus enabled to

tak e could not be favourable to its harm onious co-

operation with poetry in the result of their combinedefforts— the opera. I t is true that at the beg inningthe rights of music were asserted in a very modestw ay. In the first lyrical drama, ' D aphn is, ' w hichwas performed at Florence, in 1594, the musical part

seems to have consisted chiefly in the transform a-tion of the spoken dialogue into rec itative , bo th ofthe " secco " and " obligato " kinds , accompaniedby the orchestra, such as it was a t th e tim e. B u tM onteverde soon afterwards became bolder in h ismusical conceptions. Both th e orchestral an dvocal parts were increased by the introduction ofso-called symphonies(i.e., preludes and interludes),and ensemble pieces for the singers. A lessandroScarlatti first used the regular form of the ariain the opera, which henceforth became en tire lydependent on musical purposes. Certain esta-blished forms of absolute music, like finale or duetwere hodily transferred into the action of th e



RICHARD WAGNER. 2 3

piece, without any regard to their poetical pro-

pr iety. I n the course of time the poet becamethe bondsman of the musician, and had to arrangehis libretti (as they were ignominiously called)entirely according to the arbitrary decision of thelatter. Ev en the hum an voice, the last stronghold

of the poetical element in music, was treatedhenceforth like any other instrum ent, only w ith aview to display its beauties of sound. In mostcases it seems as if words were put into the mouthof th e singer only as more convenient for him to

pronounce than meaningless vowels. A t mosttheir contents served to give the composer someslight indication whether to write a brilliantallegro or a languid adagio. Nearly the samem igh t be said of the whole dramatic poem, the

merits of which depended almost entirely on itsadaptedness for musical purposes. The dulnessand absurdity of most of these productions are,in consequence, almost inconceivable. Soon, how-ever, music in its own sphere had to experience

the evil results of this neglect of its natural foun-dation. Forgetful of its highe r artistic aims, itlost hold of all poetic meaning, and was degradedto a mere display of skill on the part of clever



24 RICHARD WAGNER.

vocalists, who performed the most daring salti

mortali on the tight-rope of fioriture. If formerlythe composer had encroached upon the domain of

the poet, he now on his part was made the slaveof the casfrato, who, with great real merit as a

vocal virtuoso, combinedan innocence of all artistic

intentions scarcely to be equalled even by thestars of the modern operatic stage.

I t was against this omnipotence of the singerthat the grea t German composers protested w henthey took up the barren forms of the Italian opera,

and filled them with new vitality. Mozart was oneof the first of a brilliant group of dramatic composersto take the lead in this crusade against Itali an a rti-ficiality. He was endowed by nature with the

richest gift of musical productiveness that ever

was possessed by man, and it is no wonder thatthe genuine touches of nature and dramatic pathoswhich we still admire after the lapse of nearly a

century, acted as a wholesome antidote on the

spirits of his contemporaries against the soporific

effects of Hesperic vocalisation. Still, M ozart'sgenius was too decidedly of a musical characterto attempt, or even wish for, an operatic reformon the basis of poetry. To him also the opera



RICHARD WAGNER. 25

appeared, like the symphony or sonata, as an

entirely musical formation, in which the additionof poetry seemed onlyof importance as suggestingopportunities for the display of the powers of his

own art. He would never have approved of the

slightest concessionof musical prerogative in favour

of dram atic economy. Take , for instance, thescene in Figaro where the page is hidden in the

closet of the Countess, and her husband, mad withjealousy at finding the door locked, rushes awayfor the necessary instruments to make his entrance

by force. As soon as he is out of sight, Cherubinoappears, and seeing no other way of saving his

life and the honour of his mistress, is about to jumpout of window. There is periculum in mora, and a

moment's delay may be of fatal consequence. But

here Mozart saw the opportunity for an effectivepiece of music. Cherubino and Susanna begintheir duet, and fate, in the shape of the Countwith his hammer and drawn sword, has to waita t the door till tonic and dominant have had their

due. The admirable way in which the anxietyof the situation is rendered by Mozart's musiccannot atone for this interruption of the dramaticaction. The mere fact of his introducing a piece



26 RICHARD WAGNER.

of music in the distinct form of a duet at such a

moment shows Mozart's inabilityfor the post of adramatic Messiah, as which he is still considered by

many of his blind worshippers.Neither can we be surprised at seeing Mozart

adopt the whole apparatus of the opera seria. It

was not in his tender and unpolemical nature todestroy established forms with the sword of the

reformer; he could only make us forget the nar-

rowness of these fetters. His great merit for the

development of dramatic music consists in his

having shown and increased its capability of ren-dering poetic intention. Of the greatest importancefor us is the fact that even he was not able to writebeautiful and impressive music to dull and unsug-gestive words. The comparison w ith thi s view,of

La Clemenzadi Tito and Don Giovanni, or of Costfan Tutte and Figaro, proves more clearly thanany

philosophical argument could do that music, evenin the hands of a Mozart, depends for its highesteffects on the assistance of its sister art. " And

so," Wagner says, " it would have been M ozart,the most absolute of all musicians, who would havesolved the problem of the opera long ago ; tha t is,

who would have assisted in producing the t ruest ,



RICHARD WAGNER. 27

th e most beautiful, and most perfectdrama, if he

had m et w ith a poet whom he as a musicianwould only have had to assist But such apoet he unfortunate ly was never to find." Thisquo tation may serve at the same time as a testof veracity on the part of "Wagner's enemies,

who pe rsis ten tly accuse him of defiling the name ofMozart, and of erecting from the scattered ruinsof his rival's fame the column of his own glory.

Very different from Mozart's unpremeditated andentirely spontaneous effort is the way in which

Gluck approached the problem of settling thebalance between music and poetry in the opera.The tendency of his works was of a decidedlyreformatory character, and the principle which hecarried out in h is m usic, and to which he gave utte r-

ance even in words, w as, that the task of dramaticmusic is, and is only, to accompany the differentphases of emotion indicated in the text, and that itspos ition to worded poetry is therefore of a subordi-na te kin d. In thi s way the imm oderate influence of

th e singe r was made impossible for evermore ; he washenceforth to be the mouthpiece of the poet, andconsequently had to take the greatest possible carein conveying the full poetical meaning of his song



28 RICHARD WAGNER.

to the audience. By this means the declamatory

element became of the highest importance for thecomposer as well as the performer, and the reci-tative, in which thi s elemen t finds its fullestexpression, was brought by Gluck to an unequalleddegree of perfection. A further progress marked

by his reform is the greater consideration paidto the dramatic economy of the l ibrett i . Fre-

quent and continued interruption of the actionby an uncalled-for display of musical powers was

made all but impossible. The revolutionising

tendency of our composer was felt keenl}T

by theadherents of the old system, and the hatred of the

two parties became ev ident when the irtwo cham-pions, Piccini and Gluck, met face to face on the

battle-field of tin • stage. The scene of their deadly

contest was the gay Paris of 1777, and the ardourwith which it was carried on was quite worthy of

the important questions at stake. The highestranks of French literature and society, royaltyitself not excluded, became partisansof the I tal ian

or Franco-Germangonfaloniere.

In order to understand the reason why men of

the intellectual eminenceof Laharpe, Diderot, and

at least for a certain time Rousseau himself, fought



RICHARD WAGNER. 29

on what we now call the conservative or rather the

retrograde side, it will be required to enter to someextent into the origin of a struggle which reachedits climax at the above-mentioned time, but thedeeper causes of which date back to a much earlierperiod. I hope that the historical interest attach-

ing to the antagonists, no less than the importanceof the questions at stake, will make the readerfind a sho rt deviation from my imm ediate subjectexcusable. The national style of the opera railedat by the Italianissimi, and extolled with equal

emphasis by the frequenters of the " coin de lareine,"* was not originally a product of French soil.Lully, who may be considered its father, was ofItalian birth (Florence, 1633), but brought up inFrance, where he also received his first musical

train ing . H e composed no less than nineteenoperas and twenty-six divertissements and ballets,mostly for the court festivities of Louis the Four-tee nth. H is friendly relations to M oliere are

* So called from the gentlemen of the queen's court takingtheir seats in that particular corner of the theatre and form-ing the nucleus of the an ti-Ita lian party . The queen herself

the unfortunate Marie-Antoinette—took a lively interest inth e fates of the French opera, and particularly in those ofher compatriot Grluck.



3 o RICHARD WAGNER.

known to th e student of literatu re. The exclusive

privilege of performing operas in Paris was grantedto him, and by the permanent establishment in th isway of the so-calledAcademie Royale de Musique,th efoundation was laid of a school of dramatic com-posers, which, whatever its merits or demerits may

have been, at least can lay claim to possessing anunm istakable type of its own. T rue to th e de-clamatory spirit of French dramatic art, Lully hadmodelled his style to a great extent after theearlier form of the Italian opera, in which, as we

have seen, the recitative played a prom inen t pa rt,adding, however, a g reater va riety of conce rtedand orchestral pieces, in accordance w ith t h e moreadvanced stage of music at his tim e. The splen-dour of scenic effects and courtly pagean ts formed

another important attraction of his fashionableentertainm ents. The course th us begu n was con-tinued by Lully's most celebrated follower, Ea-meau (1683-1764), whose mode of expressioncannot be said to differ essentially from that ofhis great predecessor, making allowances, how-ever, for individual pecu liarities and th e pro -gress of musical ar t in general. The compara-tive merits of the two composers are expounded



RICHARD WAGNER. 31

by Koiisseau in the usual forcible and lucid style"

of that great writer. His evidence is the morevaluable, as his impartiality between the two is

warranted by the fact of his being their commonadversary in the contest of Italian v. French music." One must confess," he says, " tha t M. Eameau

possesses very great talent, much fire and euphony,and a considerable knowledge of harmonious com-binations and effects ; one also must gran t him

the art of appropriating the ideas of others, by

changing their character, adorningand developing

them, and turning them round in all manner ofways. On the other hand he shows less facilityof inventing new ones ; altogether he has moreskill than fertility, more knowledge than genius,or rather genius smothered by knowledge, but

always force, grace, and very often a beautifulcantilena. His recitative is not as natural but

much more varied than that of Lully; admirablein a few scenes, but bad as a rule. He was

the first to write symphonies and rich accom-

pan im ents." Eousseau continues by reproachingEameau with a too powerful instrumentation,com-

pared with Italian simplicity, and adds, summingup, tha t nobody had be tter understood than Eam eau,



32 RICHARD WAGNER.

to conceive the spirit of single passages, and to

produce artistic contrasts, bu t th at he entire lyfailed in g iving to his operas " a ha ppy and m uchto be desired un ity ." In another par t of th equoted passage Eousseau says, that Eameau standsfar beneath Lully as far as esprit and artistic tac t

are concerned, bu t that he is often superior tohim in his mode of dramatic expression.

The chief objections raised by our philosopheragainst the French opera, besides the overloadedinstrumentation alluded to, are the monotony of its

modulations, the frequency of perfect cadences asnecessitated by its declamatory character, and whatEousseau calls the separation of its melody fromthe language.

His remarks as to the last point show a depth of

thought w ith regard to the fundamental principlesof music which, particularly at the period whenthey were w ritten, would surprise u s b u t forthe sublime greatness of the intellect from which-they sprang.

The gist of the following passage tallies too wellwith what we shall have to say of Wagner's ideasabout the innate melody of languages, not to makeits quotation excusable: " J ' a i dit que toute m u-



RICHARD WAGNER. 33

sique nationale tire son principal caractere de la

langue qu i lu i est propre, et je dois aj outer que c'estprincipalement la prosodie de la langue qui con-stitu e ce caractere. Comme la musique vocale aprecede de beaucoup l'instrumentale, celle-ci atoujours recu de l'autre ses tours de chant et sa

m esu re ; et les diverses mesures de la musiquevocale n 'on t pu na itre, que des diverses manieresdont on pouvait scander le discours et placer lesbreves et les longues , les unes a l'e'gard desau tr e s : ce qu i est tre s evident dans la m usique

Grecque, dont toutes les mesures nMtaient que lesformules d'autan t de rhythm es fournis par tous lesarrangements des syllabes longues ou breves, et despieds don t la langue et la poesie etaien t suscepti-bles." I n qu ite ag reeing w ith what Eousseau on

various occasions says about the rhythmical de-ficiencies of French prosody, one can, on the otherhand, not but be astonished at his looking for helpin this respect to the Italian language, in whichthe force of metrical accentuation has entirely dis-

solved itself into sonorous beauty, and which,moreover, was treated by operatic composers intheir arias and recitativi secchi with the utmostnonchalance. "We are here again reminded of the

D



RICHARD WAGNER. 35

praised the rivalling Bouffonsfrom a mere spirit

of opposition. In justice to Eousseau, it ought tobe added tha t when Gluck himself appeared onthe stage as the French champion, he willingly-acknowledged the great composer's genius. In aletter to Dr. Burney, written shortly before his

death, Eousseau gives a close and appreciativeanalysis of the German master's Alceste, thefirst Italian version of which Gluck had submittedto him for suggestions; and when on the firstperformance of the piece not being received

favourably by the Parisian audience, the composerexclaimed, "Alceste est tombee," Eousseau is saidto have comforted him with the flatteringbonmot, " Oui, mais elle est tombee du ciel."

The affinity between Gluck's aspirations and the

French national operawas to a considerable extent ofa negative kind. I t consisted chiefly in his stronglyopposing the encroachments of mere vocal skill onthe domain of dramatic truth, as represented by theItalian opera seria. The bearing of his reformatory

act became the more impressive as he was preparedto urge its necessity with the full consciousness ofcesthetical speculation. " J e chercherai," he saysin his celebrated dedication of ' A lces te ' to the

D 2



36 RICHARD WAGNER.

Grand Duke of Tuscany, " a reduire la musique a

sa veritable fonction, celle de seconder la poesiepour fortifier Pexpression des sentiments et l'in-

teret des situations, sans interrompre l'action et la

refroidir par des ornements superflus." Th ispro-

gramme might almost literallybe adopted by the

disciples of the modern school, and the reproachesaimed by the conservatives at what was then the

music of the future also remind one curiouslyof the

critical utterances of which W agne r has been and is-

still the enviable object. But beyond this capability

of raising the indignant alarm of critical worthies,the artistic consequences of Gluck's and Wagner ' sworks have not as much in common as is

generally believed. It is true that Gluck alreadyfelt the necessity of a perfect unity between music

and poetry, but he never intended to bring aboutthis desirable effect by surrendering any of the

strict forms of his own art. The consequencewas that the poet was even more bound to adapthis work to the intentions of the composer, and

tha t the latter remained practicallythe omnipotentruler on the operatic stage.

The high condition of the contemporary spoken

drama in France had been of considerable influence



RICHARD WAGNER. 37

on Gluck's production. He wrote or re-wrote his

most important works for the opera in Paris andto French words; we cannot therefore be sur-

prised at discerning the immediate results of his

career more distinctly in France than in his nativecoun try. The grand opera in Par is was swayed for a

long time by the great German maestro's traditions,as continued by a school of highly accomplishedartists. The representative names of this schoolare Mehul, Cherubini, and Spontini (the latter two,although Italian by birth, living quite underthe

mighty spell of French nationality in the samedegree as we have seen it repeated in our own

days in Meyerbeer and Offenbach), whose placein

the history of their art will be secured for ever, by

the additional dramatic power and intensity which

music owes to their efforts. Sti ll the traditionalencumbrances of poetical developmentby the esta-blished musical forms remained unshakenby them.

To those mentioned already, we have now to

add two more attempts at the regeneration of the

opera made at almost the same time in two dif-ferent countries. Ita ly , the old cradle of the

divine art, was to recover once more her positionat the head of musical Europe . Eossini, the most



38 RICHARD WAGNER.

gifted and most spoiled of her sons, sallied forth

with an innumerable army of bacchantic melodiesto conquer the world, the Messiah of joy, thebreaker of thoug ht and sorrow. Eu rope by thistime had got tired of the pompous seriousnessof French declamation. I t len t bu t too w illin g

an ear to the new gospel, and eagerly quaffed th eintoxicating potion which Eossini poured out ininexhaustible streams. Look ing back w ith calmereyes at the enormous enthusiasm with whichEossini was received by our g randfathers , w e a re

almost at a loss to discern the causes for such anunequalled success. I t requires , indeed, all th e pa-tience of an English audience to endure nowadays aperformance of Otello, Semiramide, or any of E os sin i'sserious operas except Gittaitme Tell. The recitatlvo

secco is treated by him w ith all the dryness which th isominous name implies. The melodious stru ctu re,mostly founded on dance-like rhytnms, verges con-stantly on the trivial, and wherever Eossini covetsthe forbidden fruit of counterpoint, his deficienciesbecome sadly obvious. Only rare ly the swan ofPesaro rises with the dramatic power of the situa-tion to a remarkable height of passionate impulse.But Eossini knew his public, and he knew equally



RICHARD WAGNER. 3 9

"well his own reso urces ; prudent,as most Italians

are, he did his best to profit by the chances ofthe si tuation. W h a t he could do and did ad-

mirably well was to open the rich mines of

melodious beauty with which naturehad endowedhim, and which it is so easy to augment and

develop in a country whose very languageis music, and where the gondolieri chant the

stanzas of Tasso to self-invented tunes. Thisprinciple of absolute melodiousness, as Rossinicarried it out to its extreme, combined withthe

charming freshness of his good-natured humour,•was well adapted to silence the objections of gravercriticism in the universal uproar of popular ap-

plause. The unpleasant fact of a strong familylikeness among all these sweet children of song

and their common mother the waltz, whether theydeplored the sad fate of Desdemona or mimickedthe jealous rage of the Seville Dottore, seemsto

have struck only very fewof the enchanted hearers.W e need scarcely add that the pretended reform

of dramatic music on the basis of Eossini's abso-lute melody was a total failure in all respects.

Almost contemporary with his great success,and to a certain extent in opposition to it, we have



40 RICHARD WAGNER.

to record another movement of operatic develop-

ment much purer in its artistic aims and very-different in its lasting consequences. K ar l M ariavon "Weber stood at the head of this movement,which took its rise from the strong romantic and

national feeling pervadingat the time all the ranks

of German society and literature. It is a remark-able fact that the composer of Der Freischutz had

also supplied with their musical garmentthe war

songs of Korner and Schenkendorf, which rousedand

expressed the patriotic indignation againstthe yoke

of the foreign oppressor. Closely connected w iththis national elevationwas the revival of medieva land popular poetry with its sweet odour of forestand meadow, and all this Weber now embodied in

his dramatic creations. By this, the first essen-

tially new and highly important additionwas madeto the resources of the opera, as Mozart left it.

Eossini's cantilena, although sparkling withori-

ginality, was in form and essence nothing but

an exact reproduction of the Italian aria of the

last century. W eb er's melody, on the contrary,was founded en tirely on the tune of the Volks-lied, and to its close connection with the inex-haustible and ever new creating power of popular



RICHARD WAGNER. 41

feeling, it owed the charm of its delightful fresh-

ness. Every passion and sentiment within therange of this pure and simple language Weberexpressed with incomparable beauty; only wherethe grand pathos of dramatic action demands a

higher scope of musical conception the limits of

his power become obvious. For the foundationof his dramatic production after all was melody,melody quite as absolute, although much purerand nobler than that of Eossini \ and the ultimateharmonious amalgamation of music and poetry,by

which alone a pure dramatic effect is attainable,was not to be found on this basis.

The new element of national and popular colour-ing in music was soon appreciated in all its

practical results by Weber's skilful colleagues of

the French operatic stage. The versatile geniusof Kossini proved equalto the occasion. Full of

the new idea, he left his country, crossed the Alps,and entered triumphantly the capital of moderncivilisation laden with the Ra/iz des Vaches and

other melodious specimensof the Alpine flora,theinnocent charms of which he was to interpret to

the habitues of the Grand Opera. Auber, w itha simultaneous impulse, explored the Gulf of



42 RICHARD WAGNER.

Naples, and embodied the results of his Lazzaroni

experience in the immortal melodies of the Mnettede Portici. The climax of this national, or as it

has also been called, historic phaseof the opera was

reached by Meyerbeer, Weber's countryman and

co-disciple of Abbate Yogler. He was too well

acquainted with the mysterious practices of populareffect, not to see at a glance the immense advantagesof a striking air of the national kind . Keverencefor the historic individuality of such a tune , and

the movement represented by it, was something

entirely strange to his eclectic turn of m i n d ; wit-ness the sacrilegious way in which he treatedLuther 's monumental hymnin the Huguenots, withall the raffinement of the French opera. His

artistic conscience was never troubled while he

was safe (as well he might be) tha t his tr ick wouldnot be found out by the compatriots of his selec-tion. W hi le fully agreeing w ith W ag ne r's severecondemnation of such unprincipled writing for

momentary effect, by which Meyerbeer degradedhis own genius and tha t of his art, we cannot helpsaying that, upon the whole, his opinion of the

composer of the Huguenots seems to be marked by

an unjustifiable severity. Dram atic music owes.



RICHARD WAGNER. 43

to M eyerbeer new accents of genuine pathos, w hich

have added considerably to its powers of renderingpassionate emotions. W ag ner 's aversion seems tofind its psychological explanation to a certain extentin the circumstance, that his own first efforts movedin the sphere of Meyerbeer and Halevi, and that

from his present higher point of view he looksback with intense horror on the sins of his youth.

Su rveying once more the different stages throu ghwhich we have accompanied the opera, from itsmodest beginning in the six teen th century to the

present day , we notice an enormous progress inth e va riety and intensity of its means of expres -sion, but scarcely any change in the relativeposition of poetry and music, of which the latterwas from beg inning to end considered as the

sovereign principle imposing its own conditions onth e sister ar t. The problem of a harmonious unionof the two elem ents could not, as we have seen,be solved on this unnatural basis.

W e m igh t call it a kind of Nemesis tha t in thehighest development of music in its separateexistence, in the symphony, the demand of aprevious poetic inspiration was felt at first, andthat it was Beethoven, the greatest musical creator



44 RICHARD WAGNER.

of all times, who was to bow down before th e

eternal rights of poetry, and usher in the newepoch of w ha t we still may call th e music of t hefuture. I t must be confessed th a t before him hi sar t had been in a state of unconsciousness of it sown powers and duties. None of th e gre at com-

posers had taken a higher aim than that of display-ing the beauties of music in its own limits, that is,in the domain of sound. H ence the wonderfulvariety of melodious and harmonious combinationsin the old Italian masters ; hence the prod igious

skill in the polyphonous tex tu re of Bac h's andH ande l's counterpoint. The grow th and climaxof emotions which these beautiful sounds mightconvey to the mind rem ained a secondary con-sideration, and wherever such emotions were

condensed into words, their divergence from theaccompanying music was not always avoided bythe greatest masters. The motive of the openingchorus, for instance, in B ach's celebrated can tata,1 Ich ha tte viel Bekiimm erniss, ' w ould suit a joyousditty quite as well as the quoted complaint of asorrowful Christian. Pe rhaps in many cases Bachhad sketched the theme of his fugue before he chosethe corresponding words. Exam ples of th e same in -



RICHARD WAGNER. 45

congruity might be quoted from all the standard

works of the last century—Gluck's operasnot ex-cluded. It was, in fact, unavoidable as long as the

musical conception precededin time and importancethe poetical idea, whetheror not expressed in dis-

tinc t words. N ot soin Beethoven. In all the bliss

of musical creation he betrays a longing for some-thing of which he himself was scarcely aware,but

which he descried with the unconscious divina-tion of genius, and the marks of which are trace-able in the works of his last and grandest period.

H e was the first to condense the vague feelingswhich were all that music had hitherto expressedinto more distinctly intelligible ideas. He evenbrings the song of birds, the thunder, and the

murmuring brook before the ear,not as a portrait

of nature, but as at once a suggestion and embodi-ment of the feelings which would be called up by

t h e m ; Mehr AusdrucJc der Empfindung als Malerei,as he wrote himself at the head of his PastoralSymphony. In Schopenhauer's parallel between

the act of composing and a dream, this phaseofBeethoven's artistic creation would representthe

transition between sleeping and waking, wherethe recovering senses supply the mind with images



46 RICHARD WAGNER.

from the outer world to clothe its dream, which

was naked and shapeless. Indeed, the re are pas-sages in Beethoven's later instrumental works, suchas long distinct rec itativi, which can only be ex-

plained by the presence of some occult ideastruggling for self-consciousness, or, if it may be,

expression. Th is idea be ing prev ious to allmusical conception, the forms of absolute musichad to submit to its harmonious expansion, and

in this way the spell of their unlimited swaywas

broken for ever. It therefore was Beethoven who

restored the true relations of the two arts, whichhenceforth became inseparable. The possibility of

music for the sole sake of sonorous beauty has

virtually ceased to exist, and any composer withhigher aspirations than those of a genre painter,

without subject or artistic purpose, has to

consider it his task to express a preconceivedpoetical idea by means of his sound. It is the par tof music to receive this idea, and to bring it forthagain idealised and raised to its own sphere of

pure passion. " For music," as "Wagner beautifullyexpresses it, " is a woman ; the essence of a woman'snature is love, but this love is receptive, and

surrendering itself unconditionallyto the beloved.



RICHARD WAGNER. 47

The result of Beethoven's gigantic reform for

the opera is at once visible . M usic in its newposition could never attempt to fetter the organicgrowth of the drama by imposing upon it condi-tions strange to its own na ture . Henceforth theart of sound was limited to its own sphere of

intensifying the poet's conceptions by means ofits ideal powers. It was not given to Beethovenhimself, to make the one last step to the music-drama, perhaps only because he did not find a

poem congenial to his inspiration. But it was he

who showed the capability of music for this tasknot by his single opera, which belongs to an earlyperiod of his career, and, after all, is not morethan a symphony of instruments and human voices,b u t by the works of his last period, and foremost

of all by his Ninth Symphony, the sublime accom-paniment of some immense drama,of which man-kind itself, with all its doubts, pains, and joys,isth e hero. W ag ne r calls the Ninth Symphony thelast that was ever written,and seems to deny the

possibility of a further progress of music except in itsdram atic sphere. W it h this , however, we are obligedto disagree to some extent. The music-drama is

• certa inly the highes t typ eof musical development;



48 RICHARD WAGNER.

still, the emergence of this does not make im-

possible or irration al th e pe rpe tua tion and perfec-tion of a lower and simpler species as such. Sure lythe songs of Schubert, Schumann, M ende lssohn,and Franz, or the symphonies by which the threeformer composers and Lisz t haAre enriched our

literature, cannot leave any doubt about the vitalityof these forms, founded as they are on Bee tho ven'sreformatory idea, and bearing witness to the h ighaspirations of their authors.

3.

We have completed the first part of ourta sk ; the reader who has followed us pa tien tly

in the course of our investigations will, wehope, have a distinct idea of the ke y-no teof a movement which hitherto he was satisfiedto know by the vague nam e of the M usicof the Fu tur e. H e will understand w hat we

the believers in th is future and its art, arestruggling for, what are our hopes and fears, whatour ideals. It w ill now be my further du ty toshow, how far and in w ha t way these hopes and



RICHARD WAGNER. 49

aspirations are realised in the creations of Kichard

"Wagner; for by a rare gift of nature he is en-dowed w ith the combined genius of music andpoe try, and in him at last we m ust recognise thereformer who re-unites in the music-drama the twoar ts of poetry and music, which seemed to be

separated by a profound chasm and in realityare one.

But before we enter into a new field of specula-tive inquiry, the reader will naturally feel anxiousto be sligh tly introduced to the personality of the

man, about whose achievements he has been hea ringso m uch. The present w riter is the more w illingto meet this justifiable craving of the mind for themore solid nourishm ent of facts, after so muchunsubstantial theory, as it appears to him that the

cloud of dust raised by enemies and friends in theircontest about the music of the future has envelopedWagner himself in a mysterious atmosphere ofcon tradictory rum ours. I have repeatedly foundserious difficulties in persuading English friends,

particularly of the youthfully enthusiastic type,th a t our master is not quite a beginner ju st aboutto sow his wild oats in works like ' Tristan andI s e u l t ' or the ' Eh inegold. ' The most valuable

E



50 RICHARD WAGNER.

material for the following dates has been taken

from two autobiographical sketches w ritte n byW ag ne r at different periods of his career. Thefirst contains a short account of his adventures upto 1842; the second is dated ten years later, andgives a most interesting survey of the master's

youthful errors and longings, and their bear-ing upon the a rtistic deeds of his riper age .Both have been rep rinted in the first and fourthvolumes of his collected works. O ther factshave been gleaned from biographical notices

published at various times in newspapers and peri-odicals.

William Eichard Wagner was born at Leipsicon May 22nd, 1813 . H is father occupied a post inthe municipal government of that city, and was

trusted with the management of the town police byMarechal Davoust during the French occupation, he,it is said, being the only one am ongst his colleagues,who was able to converse fluently with the con-querors in the ir own language . H e died soon

after the liberation of the German territory, andleft a family of seven children , of whom th e last-born, our composer, was still in his earliestinfancy. The w idow 's second husband was L u d -



RICHARD WAGNER. 51

wig Geyer, a portrait painter, who had. formerly

been an actor, and retained his interestin dramaticpoetry to the end of his life. This circumstanceseems to be the only connecting link between Wag-ner's family and the stage, which was to becomeof such decisive importance not only to his own

artistic career, but also to those of his brothers andsisters. They almost all temporarily belonged to

the theatrical profession, and Wagner 's eldestbrother again bequeathed his talent to his two

daughters, one of whom, Johanna, acquired a

high reputation as a singer and actress. She tookthe part of Elizabeth at the first performance of

her uncle's opera Tannhduser. Only our masterhimself entertained from the beginning a strongaversion against appearing asan actor in public \

he himself ascribes his idiosyncrasy againstthe paraphernalia of the modern stage to the deepimpression which the severe grandeur of the

antique drama produced on his youthful mind.His strong imitative tendency,by which the first

awakening of genius may generally be recognised,might have led him to his stepfather's second pro-fession, but the early loss of the kind man soonremoved this passing inclination from the boy's

E 2



52 RICHARD WAGNER.

m in d ; moreover, he had been found an aw kw ard

pupil in his few attempts at handling charcoal andpencil.

In the chief represen tative of poetry in music,it cannot astonish us to see, that his first aspirationswere en tirely of the poetic kind, and tha t only

through these he was led to the complementaryaid of musical expression . The first flights of h isyouthful muse we have to date back as far as182G, when we encounter W ag ne r as a not ve ryindustrious or hopeful pupil of the Kreuzschule, at

Dresden, age thirteen. H e had been stu dy ingEnglish in order to understand Shakespeare, andthe overpowering impression of his works wasresponsible for the first outbreak of "Wagner'sjuvenile eccentricity. The result was an enormous

tragedy, a kind of compound of ' H a m le t' and1 K ing Lear. ' The following is W ag ne r's ownhumorous description of his monstrous first-born :" I had murdered forty-two people in th e courseof my piece, and was obliged to let most of them

reappear as ghosts in the last acts for w an t of liv ingcharacters." I t was not long afterwards, at Leipsicwhere the family had removed, th at W ag ner be-came acquainted w ith the grea t works of Beethoven



RICHARD WAGNER. 53

whose death about the same time passed not

without a deep impression on the young enthusiast.The music to Goethe's < E g m o n t ' by this masterexcited his admiration to such a degree that heat once saw the necessity of a similar musicalaccom paniment to his own tragedy , and, not-

withstanding his ignorance of counterpoint andthorough -bass, boldly decided to supply the wantfrom his own resources. Th is led to a rapidperusal of some theoretical works, and in its furtherconsequences to W ag ner 's adoption of th e musical

profession. Childish and grotesque though theseebullitions of precocious conceit may appear, wecannot bu t discover w ith hopeful joy, and acceptas a good omen, the two names of Shakespeare andBeethoven at the outset of our master's thorny

way to the pure he ights of self-conscious artis ticpurpose.

As a th ird decisive element in W agne r's earlyself-education, we may add the history and myth-ology of an tique Greece. This , in preference to

the more accessible knowledge of Latin, he studiedw ith an ardour, which proved extinguishable only bythe pedantic drill of his schoolmasters at Leipsic.But the all-engrossing longing for artistic utterance



54 RICHARD WAGNER.

soon expelled all minor interests from our master's

soul. H e began to neglect his philological s tud iescompletely, w ithout, however, su pp lying them byseriously entering into the theoretical foundationof his chosen art. As yet the Titan ic im petuosityof his nature shunned the limits of artistic measure,

and was prone to see in every rule a fetter. H ebegan treatin g various dramatic subjects, after hisown fashion, producing verses and music simul-taneously, w ithout any settled plan as to th egeneral course of the action. A n overture com-

posed about this period, which he himself callsthe " climax of his nonsens icalities," was playedat the Leipsic Theatre, bu t excited only irrep res -sible merriment on the pa rt of the audience. B u tw ith undaunted energy he turn ed to other plans,

the firm belief in his own vocation being the onlygu iding star on his sea of dark , indefinable long-ings. His theoretical knowledge of music wasall this time ut terly neglected. The technique ofthe piano he disdained to acquire, looking down

upon that supplementary instrument with a con-tempt characteristic of the future master of instru-mentation. B u t even th e intricacies of ha rm on ywere at tha t period unravelled by him. W i th th e



RICHARD WAGNER. 55

sole exception of a course of contrapuntal studies,

under the excellent Cantor Weinlig, he, indeed,never underwent much regular musical training.He himself acknowledges this absenceof a sys-

tematic education, and ascribes to it greatly his

indomitable energy in following untrodden paths,

or, as he symbolically calls it, the fatal gift of" the nev er contented spirit which always seeks"bhe new." But this spirit soon led him to the

only true sourceof self-purification, which he foundin the works of th e great masters of h is art, and most

of all in the sublime efforts of Beethoven's genius.The following ex tract from Schum ann 's musicalpaper of 1838, may illustra te the zealous earnestness,which at that time already was characteristicof allWagner 's doings. It was written by Heinrich

Dorn, then a friend, and now a fierce adversary ofour master. " I am doubtful," he says, " whetherthere ever has been a young musician more familiarwith the works of Beethoven, than "Wagner wasat

eighteen. He possessed most of the master's over-

tures, and large instrumental scoresin copies madeby himself; he went to bed with the sonatas, and

rose again with the quar te t ts . He sang the songsand whistled the concerti,for with the playing he



56 RICHARD WAGNER.

could not get on very w e ll; in brief the re was in

him a regular furor Tentonicus, which, combinedwith considerable scientific culture, and a peculiaractivity of the mind, promised powerful shoots."

At the time to which the date of this sketchtakes us, W agne r was the conductor of a second-

rate opera at Riga, a position which, unsatisfactoryas it was, must still be considered as an improve-ment upon similar employments held by him beforein middle-sized cities of North Germany.

The interven ing period we migh t call the pre-

historic time which we notice in the artistic careersof many grea t musicians. W h a t has become of allthe Italian operas which H ande l and Mozart com-posed to order and-by the dozen? Their titles aredimly discernible to the student of musical histo ry,

and one ma}T occasionally meet with an air selectedfrom them in the concert-hall or the draw ing-room ;otherwise they have dwindled again into oblivionand nothingness. Nearly the same applies tothe various productions of Wagner's early years.W e will not encumber the memory of the rea de rw ith the analysis of a symphony, several ove rtures,and other miscellaneous compositions, nor with thenames of various operas, which would have t o



RICHARD WAGNER. S7

remain names only. One of the latter, the subject

of which was tak en from Shakespeare's ' Measurefor Measure,' was performed once at Magdeburgwithout due preparation or marked success. Th iswork is considered by its author as the ultimateresult of the sensual fermentation of his storm and

stress period, but not without a germ of purerartistic aims.

The personal history of our artist during this-interval contains only a few remarkable incidents.I t p resents the usual m ixture of extravag ant schemes,

remorseful disappointment and misery, in which som any hopes and gifts have perished. The pressinganxieties of his affairs were still increased by hismarriage with an actress at Konigsberg, in whom,how ever, he was not to finda congenial sympathiser

wi th his artistic interests, nor even a carefulhelpmate in th e trou bles of daily life. H is positionin Eiga marked, as we have seen, a slight advancein his prospects, but still was not of the kind to

satisfy the demands of Wagner's energy for a wider

sphere of action. It belonged to the duties of hisoffice to conduct the silliest productions of theFrench and Italian stages. There is somethinginexpressibly tragic in the idea of his rehearsing



RICHARD WAGNER. 59

found his situation amongst a set of uncongenial,

nay even inimical, pygmies more and more in-tole rab le ; he resolved to break his fetters, and intrue giant fashion he began by attempting im-possibilities. I t struck him that Pa ris would beth e rig h t place to realise his dreams of happ iness

and glory, and who could be a better man to in-troduce his works to the capital of the world thanScribe, the celebrated librettiste of Meyerbeer andothe r stars of the grand opera? To Scribe, therefore,he sends the scheme of a grea t dramatic work,

ask ing him to w rite it in French verse at theexpense of the composer, and at th e same time totake pre lim ina ry steps for its performance at theopera. The resu lt of th is cavalier offer from anutterly unknown composer, without even an in-

troduction, was as might be expected,—no answer.B u t th is first failure was no t able to damp

"Wagner's enthusiasm. If Scribe refuses to w ritehim a text , he is quite th e m an to supply himselfw ith one. H is choice of a subject fell on Bulw er's

novel, ' Eienzi; ' and after having finished the wholepoem and th e music to the first two acts, he em -barked with his wife on board a sailing vessel,which was to take him to London, en route for



60 RICHARD WAGNER.

Paris . The voyage was long and unfavourable ;

they were driven out of thei r course, and onceduring a storm the captain had to seek she lterin a Norwegian port. After nearly a m onth th eyreached at last their destination , rem ained a sho rttime in London, and continued their jou rney. I n

the autumn of 1839, W ag ne r arrived at Pa ris w ithintroductions from M eyerbeer to th eatrical m an-agers and full of hopes of seeing his work performed.W e almost shudder in thin kin g of the fatal con-sequences which a great success might have had on

W agne r's creative power. Perhaps he would havebeen content with the doubtful honour of sharin gwith Meyerbeer the lucrative laarels of a Europeanreputation. Luckily for himself and his art, Fortu nehandled him with all the relentless c ruelty which she

seems to reserve especially for the children ofgenius. H is visit to Pa ris proved an ut te r failure.A il his attem pts at testing the vit ality of hiswork by the ordeal of a performance before thecritical French audience were in va in. In orderto earn a scanty livelihood, he had to unde rgothe most humiliating trials of musical drudgery;and even in this way he narrow ly escaped th edeath from starvation which he described with



RICHARD WAGNER 61

gr im humour in his novelet te: * The End of a

Musician in Paris . ' We may consider it as themost irrefutable test of "Wagner's real geniustha t he did not perish in this overpowering sea

of misery and sorrow. It was the original long-ing of his nature for the purer aims of art tha t

broke into the night of his despair, and t aughth im now, when every hope of worldly successhad vanished, to seek refuge in the joys of spon-taneous creation, which is regardless of ephemeralapplause. The instinct of the true artist led

him to the inexhaustible source of popular ima-gination, as the only congenial companion of his

ideal art, and his searching eye soon discovered twomythological types, as the poetical representativesof his own sufferings and aspirations. They were

the Flying Dutchman, homeless and longing forhome, on the pitiless waves of a borderless ocean;and Tannhauser, satiated with the bitter pangsofpleasure, and released from the thraldomof lust by

the responsive love of pure womanhood. The

genesis of the first mentioned libretto is ofpeculiar interest to the English reader, as its

origin in "Wagner's version seems ind irectly con-nected with this country, and deservesa particular



62 RICHARD WAGNER.

m entioning as one of the few benefits which th e

m aster owes to Eng land . Th e following is aresume of my researches in this direction :—

The story of the Flying Dutchman can be tracedback as far as the sixteenth centu ry, and like thatof his fellow-sufferer by land, the W an der ing Je w ,

seems to be an outgrow th of th e tho rou gh ly rev o-lutionised and exalted state of feeling caused by thetwo great events of those times—the discovery of anew world by the Spaniards, and of a new faith bythe Germ ans. Captain Vanderdecken, as is generally

known, tries to double the Cape of Good Hopenotw ithstanding a heavy gale blowing dead in histeeth , and finding this task too much for him ,the obstinate Dutchm an swears that he w ill c arryout his purpose , even if he should have to sail

till doomsday. The Evil One, hearing th is oath,accepts it in its most literal meaning , and in con-sequence the unfortunate sailor is doomed to roamfor ever and aye on the ocean, far from hiswife and his beloved Holland. How ever, the

poets of later ages, pitying the weary wandererof the main, have tried in different ways torelease him from this desolate fate. Cap tainMarryat in his well-known novel has not been very



RICHARD WAGNER. 63

fortunate in this respect. A nother denouement of

the story was invented by Heinrich Heine, andupon this Wagner has avowedly based the poem ofhis opera. In Heine's fragmentary story, ' TheMemoirs of Her r von Schnabelewopski, ' the hero(who, by the bye, shows only slightly disguised the

characteristic featuresof the great humorist himself)tells us how on his passage from H am bu rg to

Amsterdam he saw a vessel with blood-red sails,very likely the phantom shipof the Flying Dutch-man, whom shortly afterwards he beheldin ipsissima

persona on the stage of the last-named city. Thenew feature added to the old story is t h i s :—tha t ,instead of an unconditional sentence, Vanderdeckenis condemned to wander till doomsday, unless he

shall have been released by the love of a woman

" faithful un to de ath ." The Devil (stupidas he is)does not believe in the virtue of women, and

therefore allows the unhappy captainto go ashoreonce every seven years, in order to take a wife.The poor D utchm an has been disappointedin his at-

tempts at finding such a paragon of faithful spousesfor many a time, till at last, ju s t after anotherperiod of seven years has elapsed, he meetsa Scotch(according to Wagner, a Norwegian) merchant,and



64 RICHARD WAGNER.

readily obtains his paternal consent to a proposed

marriage with his daug hter. This daughter herselfhas formed a romantic attachment for the unfortu-nate sailor, whose story she has heard and whosepicture hangs in her room. When she sees the

real Flying Dutchman she recognises him at once

by the resemblance with his likeness, and,heroically deciding to share his fate, acceptsthe offer of his hand. At this momentSchnabelewopski-IIeine is (by an unforeseen and

indescribable incident) called away from the

house, and, when he comes back, is jus t in time tosee the Dutchman on board his own ship, which is

weighing anchor for another voyage of hopelessdespair. He loves his bride, and would save her

from the fate that threatens her if she accompanies

h im. But she, " faithful un to de ath ," ascends ahigh rock and throw s herself into the waves,by which heroic deed the spell is broken, and

the Flying Dutchman, united with his bride,enters the long closed gates of eternal rest.

Heine pretends, as we have said, to have seenthis acted on the Amsterdam stage; this statement,however, he withdrew afterwards, and emphaticallyclaimed as his own the invention of the beautiful



RICHARD WAGNER. 65

an d em inently dram atic episode. The former state -

ment was also in so far inaccurate that he neversailed from Hamburg to Holland; his voyage was,on the contrary, directed to London, and heremost likely it was also that he made the acquaint-ance of the Flying Dutchman in a theatrical capa-

city. The story of the Phantom Ship seems tohave been at that t ime (1827) to a certain extentpopular in England. A very impressive versionof

i t had appeared in ' Blackwood's Magazine' (May,1821), and this was made the groundwork of a

melodramatic production of the late Mr. Fitzball,apla yw right of those days, whose adaptations were asnumerous and quite as "or ig ina l" as those of somecontem porary stage favourites. The piece in questionis extremely silly and badin every respect. Myn-

heer Yanderdecken here is the slave and ally ofsome horrid monster of the deep, and his motiveintaking a wife is only to increase the number of his

victims. In this wicked purpose, however, he

does no t succeed— the heroine escapinghis snares

and marrying (if I remember rightly) a youngofficer whom she had loved against the willof her

father. Th is piece was running at the AdelphiTheatre about the time of Heine's visitto London;

F



66 RICHARD WAGNER.

and nothing is more probable than that the German

poet, who conscientiously studied the Englishstage, should have seen it. For the circum stanceof the D utchm an's tak ing a wife, H ein e would inthat case be indebted to Fitzball, in whose piecethere also occurs an old picture connected with the

story. I t would thus be most inte res ting to note ,how Heine developed out of these triv ia l indica-tions his noble idea of the Dutchman's deliveranceby the love of a woman. W ag ne r, on his pa rt,has heightened the dramatic pathos of the fable

by making his hero symbolise a profound philo-sophical idea—thus raising the conception of hischaracter from the sphere of a popular tale into thatof artistic significance, out of fancy into imagina-tion. The pitiful figure of M ynheer Vander-

decken becomes an embodiment of life-weariness,longing for dea th, and forgetfulness of indiv idua lpain and struggle, or (which is the same) ofexistence.

Still, we must acknowledge, it would seem, that

the modest germs of these grand ideas werefurnished to both the German poet and composer bythe English playwright; and we must further notethat it was on a voyage to the B ritish shores that bo th



RICHARD WAGNER. 67

the one and the other conceived the scheme of their

work. Fo r I need not tell the reader, who may-have w itnessed a performance of theFlying Dutch-man at Drury Lane, that the wild atmosphere ofseas and storms hovering over the whole piece is thereflex of Wagner's own impressions during his

eventful passage from E iga to London. The piecewas finished two years later, in only seven weeks,when Wagner had left Paris for a short stay in thecoun try. After an inte rruptio n of his creativelabours for nearly nine months, W agne r felt him-

self a musician again, and this consciousness of ahigher task restored him courage and strength inthe renewed battle of life.

The contrast betw een th e spectacu lar effects(combined though they may appear with great

dramatic power) in Rienzi) and the purely artisticmeans of rende ring emotional accents, aimed at inthe Dutchman, is at once strik ing and relieving. I tresembles the sense of freedom one feels in passingfrom th e scented atmosphere of a crowded opera-

house into the bracing air of sea and forest.B u t it is in a still highe r sense th at the latter

w ork signifies the ideal regeneration, the antique" K a t h a r s i s " of W agner as a man and art is t. Up



68 RICHARD WAGNER.

to this time brilliant success had been the chief

aim of his thoughts; now that disappointmentandmisery had weaned the strong m an from hischerished hopes, he retired into himself, in tentupon following the call of his only rem ain ing friend,the true muse. The Flying Dutchman was begun

without a hope, almost without a wish, for outwardsuccess; he only felt that what he had to say wastrue to himself, and so he said it, listen who liked .In this way, and urged onty by the necessity of hisnature, W agn er entered upon his new career

without imagining himself the bearing of his refor-matory act on the progress of art in general.

In the meanwhile his affairs had take n amore favourable tu rn . Quite aga inst his expec-tation, Rienzi had been accepted by the Court

Thea tre at Dresden, w ith the additional flatteringinvitation to the master to conduct his work him -self. In the spring of 1842 he returned to Ger-many, and crossed the Ehine with the tears of joyand renewed home-feeling in his eyes. H e also

visited the Castle of Wartburg, the scene of hisprojected Tannhauser, on his way to Dresden . I nOctober, 1842, Rienzi was performed for the firsttime, and the brilliant success of the work led to



RICHARD WAGNER. 69

Wagner's engagement as conductor of the Eoyal

Opera. The unexpected change in his condition, froma friendless strange r in a foreign land to the leader ofone of the grea test art in stitutions in his own country,could not bu t fill our master w ith joyful surprise.But the dream of happiness was of short duration.

Notwithstanding the unusual success ofRienzi atDresden, the great German theatres showed little in-clination to open the ir gates to the new -com er; andeven w here his works were accepted, the pub lic wereat first more taken by surprise than pleased at the

unusu al force of this new language. The bitte r dis-appo intment felt by W ag ne r at the first perform-ances of his Dutchman at Berlin, and ofTannhduser

at Dresden, could not but convince him—particu-larly if he remembered the storms of applause ex-

cited by his spectacular first-born—that what hewished to say could as ye t be directed only to afew sympathising friends.

This sense of isolation, combined w ith hisdaily experience of the utter want of artistic aimsand principles in the management of the greatGerman theatres, surrounded him with an atmo-sphere of m orbid discontentedness in which achange at any price seemed arelief, and it was in



70 RICHARD WAGNER.

thi s mood that he, altho ugh little of a po litician,

joined the insurrectionary movement of 1848, and1849 by word and deed. Two pam phlets writte nduring this period prove how, even in the highestexcitem ent of active partisanship , he never lostsight of his artis tic mission. One of them relate s

to the foundation of a tru ly na tiona l thea tre atDresden, while the other, 'Art and Revolution, 'tries to demonstrate the close connection between theregeneration of political life and similar tendenciesin contemporary art.

The Titan was again progressing in enormousstrides towards Utopia. But, alas for the clum syrealities of our earthly existence ! The revolu tionat Dresden was crushed by Prussian bayonets, and"Wagner had once more to take up his staff and fly

the country as an exile. After a short sojourn atParis, where he seemed to be drawn by a sort ofunacknowledged fascination, and where w ith equalcertainty bitte res t disappointment lay in w ait forhim, he ret ired to Switzerland, severed from his

friends and country, and without the shadow of ahope of ever being able again to inte rpret his w orksto his nation.

This weight of misery would have crushed a



RICHARD WAGNER. n

w eaker m a n ; W ag ne r 's dramatic nature rose upin

the contest, riding on the billows that were to sub-m erge him . The conductor's baton was wrenchedfrom his hand, so he took up the penof the critic,attacking in their turn and without distinctionormercy all classes of society, musical conductors and

au tho rs, critics, Jew s, and actresses, bu t m ostof allthose m ercenaries in his own branch of art who, mak-ing " a milch cow of the divine goddess," overflowedthe stage with the shallow display of their common-place artificialities. The mere invention of the in-

comparable term ' Kapellmeistermusik ' for thiskind of production would secure Wagner a pro-minent place amongst satirical writers.

That the goad of his invective was always wiselydirected and used with discretion we should be

sorry to assert. But it must be remembered thatin cleansing the stables of Augias, one cannotbeexpected to be over nicein his distinctions; more-over, the combative side of Wagner's power, whichprevents him from discerning the pure gold in amass of alloy, is too closely interwoven withthewhole bias of his nature not to be gladly acceptedby his friends. The bird's-eye view from thesublime heights of genius must needs ignore many



72 RICHARD WAGNER.

of those minute differences and considerations with

"which we mortals of smaller stature are qbliged toreckon. Besides, a great man m ust be accepted orrenounced as a whole, like the sea or the sun inheaven. If you look at it thro ugh the lens of adissecting criticism, its splendour will be diffused

in single rays of moderate ligh ting p ow er ; so th edemigod will look very much like an ordinarymortal, not because he has ceased to be thehero,but because you are thevalet of the proverb.

And, after all, the polemical pa rt forms onlya small

and comparatively unimportant fraction of Wagner'sw ritings. I t was by means of these theoretica lspeculations that he himself for the first time becameconscious of the enormous bearing of h is own artist icdeeds on the progress of music . "What he had

done hitherto was more like a groping in the darkfor the dazzling splendour of a distant light, thanthe steady progress of the accomplished artist in thebr ight rays of his ideal aspirations. Not that his la terworks are any the less the imm ediate creations' of

impulse. On the contrary, we hear in them more andmore distinctly the sound of the unfettered wings ofpurest inspiration. Only the level from which theseinspired wings now star t on the ir sunw ard flight



RICHARD WAGNER. n

is higher, aTbd therefore the atmospherein which

th ey move p urer than before, or, to speak w ithou tmetaphor, through the processes of metaphysicalthought and historical study "Wagner had be-come conscious of the ultimate aims of his andof all art, and also of the legitimate means by

which this aim might be attained. Fortified bythis knowledge against the temptations of ephe-m era l success, he was able once m ore to surrenderhis nature unconditionally to the free impulse ofhis genius. In the works of his later period, like

Tristan and the Meistersinger, the traces of uncerta intyin the ha nd ling of the artistic material, or, still worse,of mere theatrical effects which occasionallymarthe highest beauties in Tannhduser and Lohengrin,

have entirely disappeared. We now distinguish,

in the pure proportions of the whole as well as inthe finish of the m inutes t details, the hand of themaster, in the full consciousness of his reformatorymission.

The chief features of this reform, as marked in

the later works of Wagner, we must now considera

little more closely.



74 RICHARD WAGNER.

4.

In order to appreciate fully the position of W a g -ner's dramas in the development of music, we haveto dis tinguish two different sides of thei r im po rt.F irs t of all we recognise in them an energe tic pro tes tagainst the established artificialities of a demo-

ralised operatic stage. W e have seen before howthe opera itself, based as it was on a misunderstoodimitation of the antique drama, had in the courseof time completely lost what little there might havebeen of dramatic economy in its original structure.

In Italy the predominant importance of musicalforms had entirely disarranged the harmonious pro-portions of the opera, while, in the latest phase of thelyric stage in France, the morbid craving for specta-cular effects of the lower order exceeded all bounds

of na ture and common sense, not to speak of theelevated principles of art. E u t even men of pureintentions and high genius were not able to em-body their inspirations in a form of art the organismof which was diseased to the core, and in which

the principles of music and poetry were sostrange ly at variance, tha t, instead of a des irablem utual assistance, they could not bu t con tinuallycheck and chain each other's movements.



RICHARD WAGNER. 7 5

All this was thoroughly changed by Wagner.

H e has crushed the hard fe tters of petrified formali-ties in the firm grasp of his hand , remouldingthe dead metal by the burn ing breath of hisgenius into new shapes of harmonious fashion.His operas are no longer a series of separate pieces

of music, like duets, arias, and finales, with littlereference to the action of the piece, and looselyconnected w ith each other by the weak thread of dryrecitativ i. H is last and supreme purpose is the attain-ment of dramatic truth ; and from this point of view

we m ust consider th e process of condensation andself-restraint to which "Wagner ultimately sacrificed thewhole apparatu s of absolute musical forms. The firstand most dangerous excrescence of the opera whichhe attacked was th e aria. This musical equivalent of

the monologue of the spoken drama had, in thecourse of time, obtained an undue importance. I twas considered by both the composer and thesinger as a welcome test of their musical capacities,and had, in consequence, to be inserted into the

piece w itho ut rhym e or reason, wherever thosetwo omnipotent rulers of the unfortuatelibrettide

thought fit ."Wagner has totally abolished the aria proper.



76 RICHARD WAGNER.

The whole weight of his musicial energy is

placed into th e dialogue as the chief factor ofthe action, and is fashioned entirely according tothe requirements of this action, rising w ith itwhere an occasion offers into the intensest fervourof lyrical exaltation, and always surro unding it

witJi a flow of beautiful melody, b u t w ithoutever misleading its course into the dangerouschannels of ill-applied sen timentality. I t need no tbe added that also the other forms of absolutemusic, like ensemble and finale, etc., were swept

away by the force of this dramatic energy, butW agner (and in this we have to recognise th ejjositive and reconstructive side of his revolution)has at the same tim e created a new form of musicalexpression, which originates from, and varies with

the impulse of dramatic passio n; nay, which isnothing but this passion intensified and idealisedby the divinest of a r ts ; thelogos, which has shakenoff its earthly raiments and is transferred once moreto its own ethereal sphere.

The definite appearance of this new mode ofexpression it would be impossible to describewithout an endless num ber of musical quotations.And even with those thereader would be unable to



RICHARD WAGNER. 77

realise the feeling of harmonious enjoyment with

which the perfect unity and appropriateness of theseforms affects the hearer.

I will mention only one point which bearsequally on the poetical and the musical side of

the question, and is, therefore, not so entirely

withdrawn from an explanation, as where thelat ter art alone is concerned.

"We hav e seen how W ag ner 's musical inspirationflows entirely from the conditions of his dramaticsubject. It was only na tural th at even for the

rhythmical structure of his melos,he should look toit s poetical foundation . M odern verse could offerhim but litt le assistance in th is respect. In it metricalarsis and thesis, as they existed in antique poetryhave been entirely supplanted by the rhetorical accent

of the words ; and the different forms of versefounded on this principle prove often ratheran im-

pediment than an aid to musical composition. The

im portan t a ttraction of rhym eis, for exam ple, entirelyuseless to the m us ician ; blank verse,on the other

hand, is a most unwieldy combination for musicalpurposes, and can indeed only be treated like prose.

I n th is difficulty W ag ner looked for help to

the metrical basis of all Teutonic poetry, i.e. the



78 RICHARD WAGNER.

alliterative principle orstaff rhyme, as he found it in

the ' E dda' and other rem nan ts of ancestrallore. H islast grea t work, the subject of which is also tak enfrorn the old sagas, is w rit ten in a modified rep ro-duction of the old metre which "Wagner treatsw ith em inent skill, and very much in the same

manner as Mr. Morris and Mr. E. Magnusson havedone in our language in their admirable trans lationsfrom the Icelandic*

The gain of this new method for W ag ner'smusic is inestimable. The strong accents of th e

alliterating syllables supply his melody w ithrhythm ical firmness\ while, on the other hand, theunlimited number of low-toned syllables allow fullliberty to the most varied nuances of declamatoryexpression. In order to exemplify the step in

advance, I will ask the reader to compare the songof Wolfram in Tannhduser ( ' Dir hohe L ieb e') ,where the iambic metre has been obliterated andthe verse constan tly cut to pieces by the musicalcaesura, with the wonderful love song from the

Valkyre ( 'W int crs tiirm e wichen'), where verse and

* The story of the ' Volsungs and Nibelung s.' Tra nslatedfrom the Icelandic by E. M agnusson and William M or ris.London. Ellis.



RICHARD WAGNER. 7 9

melody seem to glide on together in harmonious

rhythms like the soft windsof spring of which theytell .

Our last remarks have shownus our composerin the new light of a poet. The reader is probablyaware of the fact that Wagner, from his first opera

to his last, supp lied himself with the wordsto hismusic; and the advance which we have pointed outin the latter art, we can trace in commensuratedegrees in his dramatic writings.

The text of Rienzi displays a good deal of tha t

slovenliness in diction and versification, whichthegood-natured public of the grand opera is used to

tolerate. But when in the Flying Dutchman,Wagner left the spectacular effects of the so-called"his tor ica l" school for the popular myth, as the

unalloyed source of the purely human, his styleatonce rose with the greater requirements of his task.The fettering chrysalis was slipped off and the

beautiful butterfly raised it wings ; the librettisiehad become a poet.

Wagner himself has given us the cue to thehidden causes of this transition, whichat the sametime affords new evidence of the strict reciprocityof his musical and poetical faculties. "InBienzi,"



80 RICHARD WAGNER.

he says, " my only purpose was to w rite an ope rar

and th inking only of th is opera, I took my subjectas I found it ready made in ano ther m an 's finished

production W it h the Flying Dutchman, Ientered upon a new course, by becoming the artisticinterpreter of a subject which was given to me only

in the simple crude form of a popular ta le .* Fromthis time I became, w ith rega rd to all my dram aticworks, first of all apoet; and only in the ultim atecompletion of the poem my faculty as amusicianwas restored to me. B u t as a poet I was again

from the beginnin g conscious of my pow er ofexpressing musically the import of my subjects.This power I had exercised to such a degree, that Iwas perfectly certain of my ability of applying it tothe realisation of m y poetical purpose, and th ere -

fore, was at much greater liberty to form mydramatic schemes according to their poeticalnecessities, than if I had conceived them fromthe beginning with a view to their musicaltreatment W h a t we w ant to express in

* In comparing this statement with what we have saidabout Heine's treatm ent of the ' Flying Dutchm an ' legend,the reader ought to remember that this treatm en t comprisesonly the merest outline of the story, and purposely retainsthe tone of its popular origin.



82 RICHARD WAGNER.

" o f the mythical subject-matter allowed of the

concentration of the action on certain importantand decisive points of its development; thusI was enabled to rest on those fewer scenes witha perseverance sufficient to expound the subjectdown to its last dramatic consequences. The

nature of the subject could, therefore,not induce me,in sketching my scenes to consider in advance theiradaptability to any abstract musical form, the

particular kind of musical treatment being neces-sitated by these scenes themselves. It could

not enter my mind to ingraft on this mymusical form, grow ing as it did out of the natureof the scenes, the traditional forms of operaticmusic, which could only have marred and in-

terrupted its organic progress. I, therefore,

never thought of contemplating, on principle andas a deliberate reformer, the destruction of the

aria, the duet, and other operatic forms; but the

dropping of these forms followed consistentlyfrom the nature of my subjects." W ith this we

have nearly finished our sketch of the mostimportant features of Wagner 's music-drama, or

as it has also been called, The Work of Art of

the Futur e. O ther characteristics we shall oc-



RICHARD WAGNER. 83

casionally mention in the further course of our

remarks. Only to one more point I would faincall the reader's attention, as it has given riseto a great deal of discussion, and forms an im-portant item amongst the heads of impeachment,raised by our master's adversaries against him.

In hisi

Oper und Drama,' Wagner urges thedemand of a co-operation of all the arts, that is,ofpainting and architecture as well as of poetryand music, in the drama of the future. It,therefore, cannot surprise us to see thatin his own

attempts at realising this ideal work of art, con-siderable importance has been placed on the visiblebeauties of the action, as far as they may beattained by the painting of scenery and thegrouping of human figures.

"Wagner's stage directions are always of theminutest, and show all that skill and knowledgeof scenic effects which so favourably distinguisheshim from most other German dramatists. Butthe honest Teuton critics stand amazedat this

unwonted display of taste and elegance in thehighest sense, which to them savours of Frenchraffinement and other dangerous and evil things.They summarily condemn the dazzling splendour

G 2



84 RICHARD WAGNER.

of scenery as unworthy of the simplicity of

fatherlandish m anners and tastes. In order toprove the futility of such overstrained purismlet us ju st consider the first occu rring case inpoint. I n the first act of Tannhiiuser, when thekn igh t, satiated by th e overmeasure of joy in th e

realm of love's goddess, resolves to leave her, heinvokes against the bewitching charms of Venusth e idea of the M other of God as the pro totyp e oflove in its purest emanation. The mom ent heutt ers the name of ' M ary ,' th e spell is broken,

the ' Y cn us be rg' sinks into the abyss, and weinvoluntarily draw a deep breath as we emergefrom its close-scented atmposhere into the fresh airof a beautiful spring landscape, full of sun andflowers, and made m usical w ith the song of a

lonely shepherd. The effect of this suddenchange is indescribable and of the purest poetickind, although entirely achieved by means of ashifted piece of pasteboard.

And the same may be said of all the scenic effects

in W agn er's operas. They are made throu ghou tsubservient to the economy of the drama, with theorganism of which they are connected as closelyas music and poetry themselves. To compare th is



RICHARD WAGNER. 85

leg itim ate use of the appliances of the modern

stage w ith the inte rrup tion of the action by melo-dramatic spectacle, as we see it, for instance, inth e celebrated bu rnin g vessel of Meyerbeer's stillmore celebrated Africaine, is an absurdity whichrequires no further refutation.

5.

W e should now have to re tu rn to the personalcareer of our master, whom we left in his retirementin Switzerland, but that the facts which relate to his

reappearance on the public stage as a composer andconductor after a seclusion of nearly ten years, areso recent, and so closely connected w ith the fatesand sympathies of other living persons, that a calmhistorical account would become almost impossible.

I must, therefore, lim it myself here to a chrono-logical survey of his works, which in his, as inmost cases, seem to be the best if not onlyrapportbetween the living master and his public.

W e have in our former observations described the

genesis of Wagner's two acknowledged first operas,Bienzi and the Flying Dutchman. It has also beenmentioned how, during his stay at Paris already,he was deeply impressed w ith the beauties of



86 RICHARD WAGNER.

the popular story of ' Tannhauser, ' the kn igh t and

singer, whose sin and repentance Wagner has sincesurrounded w ith the aureole of his gen ius. Thecomposition of this work was finished du ring th ewinter 1844-45.

The next subject to which he turne d, was

in form and idea the very counterpart of thetrag ic elevation of the last-men tioned opera.. I ttransfers us from the romantic surroundings of themediaeval castle of W artbu rg into the domesticnarrow ness of a worthy artisan 's household

during the sixteenth centu ry. The ' M astersingersof Niirnberg,' with their homely conception of lifeand art, were intended by Wagner originally asa kind of humorous pendant to t he kn ight ly poetsin ' Tannhauser, ' from which however the redeem -

ing features of true honesty and justified self-assertion were not absen t. The charac ter of ' H ansSachs,' in its present conception as the type of th erisin g importance of middle-class freedom andintelligence towards the close of the mediaeval

period, is one of W agner 's finest creations. H ow -ever, this attempt at a modified revival of theantique satyr-drama was for the time abandonedin favour of another romantic subject, viz., ' Lohen-



RICHARD WAGNER. 87

grin, ' the Knight of the Swan. I shall take a

later opportunity of giving a close analysis of thisbeautiful and important work, and will add hereonly that, compared w ith c Tannh'auser,' it marksa further stage in its author's progress towardsthe

ultimate aim of pure dramatic expression. It was

finished in March, 1848, but was not performedtill two years later at Weimar, when the ener-getic action of Franz Liszt once more rallied the

friends of the banished master round the standardof the Future .

During the musical composition of Lohengrin,the old contest in Wagner 's mind between the

historical and mythical principles was also finallydecided. The representative of the former was Sieg-fried, the hero of the oldest manifestations of Teu-

tonic religious feeling ; that of the latter, Fredericthe First, the great Emperor of the Hohenstaufendynasty, whose re tu rn fromhis sleep of centuries was,till quite lately, connected by the German peoplewith the revival of the old imperial glory. I need

not add that the victory rem ained w ith Siegfried.Wagner began at once sketcliing the subject, but

gradually the immense breadth and grandeur of

the old types began to expand under his hands,



88 RICHARD WAGNER.

and the result was a trilogy or rather tetralogy

of enormous dimensions, perhapsthe most colossalattempt upon which the dramatic muse has ven-

tured since the times of Aeschylus.

The four dramatic poems which formthe cyclusof the ' King of the Nibelung ' were writ ten as

early as the middle of 1852, and the three nextyears were pa rtly occupied in writing the musicto the introductory drama, the 'Bhinegold , ' and

to the first part of the trilogy, the ' Yalkyre. '

At this point the continuation of the vast

scheme was interrupted by another work of nolesser grandeur and beauty of conception. It was

this, the tragedy of ' Tristan and Iseult . ' The

poem was begun in 1856, and the musicfinished in 1859. The performance of the work

was delayed by various circumstances till1865,when it took place under Yon Billow's excellentdirection at Munich. The enormous importanceof ' Tristan and Iseult, ' for the progress of

modern music, was at once recognised by friends

and enemies, who made its name the hueand cry in their fierce debate. Th is prom inentposition of the work may also be my excuse for

reproducing here, with a few alterations, the re-



RICHARD WAGNER. 89

m arks I made on its musical and poetical beauties,

on the occasion of a selection from it beingproduced at a recent concert of the London WagnerSociety. The passage of the programme referredto runs thus :—

TEISTAN AND ISOLDE.

INTRODUCTION AND CLOSE OF THIRD ACT - Wagner.

Tristan und Isolde is the fifth of W ag ne r'sacknowledged dramatic works, its first performance

(at M unich in 1865) following th at ofLohengrinafter an in terv al of fifteen years . The step inadvance marked by it in its author's development,and in th at of dram atic music in general, is pro-portiona te to th is lapse of time. According to his

own assertion, W agner wrote it w ith the full con-centrated power of his inspiration, freed at lastfrom the fetters of conventional operatic forms,with which he has broken here definitely andirrevocably. In Tristan und Isolde we hear for

the first time the unimpaired language of dramaticpassion, intensified by an uninterrupted flow ofexpressive melody, the stream of which is no longerobstructed or led into the artificial canals of ar ia .



go RICHARD WAGN ER.

cavatina, etc. H ere also th e orchestra obtains

that wide range of emotional expression whichenables it, like the chorus of the an tique trag edy,to discharge the dialogue of an overplus of lyricalelements, w ithou t weakening the in tensity of thesituation, which it accompanies like an unceas ing

passionate undercurrent.It is also in Tristan und Isolde that we perceive

most distinctly the powerful sway of Schopenhauer'sphilosophy, w ith its profound reproduction of the' Nirwana ' of individual existence, over our com-

poser's mind. In our work the very passion oflove is made the symbol of the supreme transfusionof the separate Ego into the nature of the belovedobject.

After the stated facts, it cannot surpr ise us to

see, th at our music-drama (for Opera would be adecided misnomer) has become a bone of contentionbetween the adherents of the liberal and conserva-tive schools of music. M any people who grea tlyadmire " certain things " inTannhiiuser and Lohen-

grin draw the line at Tristan und Isolde, which,on the other hand, is considered by the advancedparty as the representative work of a new epochin art. A musician's position to the presen t work



RICHARD WAGNER. 91

may indeed be considered as the crucial test of his

general tendency towards the pastor future.The subject of Wagner 's t ragedy is taken from

the Celtic Mabinogi of Tristrem and Iseidt, whichat an early stage became popular amongst differentnations, and found its most perfect mediceval treat-

ment in Gottfried von Strassburg's immortal epic.Our modern poet has followed his original closely,pruning, however, and modifying where the

economy of the drama seemed to require it. The

episode of Riwalin and Blancheflur, and the early

youth of Tristan remains unmentioned, and thescene opens on board the vessel, destinedto carrythe unwill ing Irish bride to old King MarJce.Despair and love's disappointment, together withthe insult inflicted upon her family by Tristan's

victory over her kinsmanMorolt, rankle in Isoldesbosom, and drive her to the resolutionof destroyingher own life together with that of her belovedenemy. Tristan is invited to drink with her the

cup of atonement, but, without Isolde's knowledge,

the prepa red poisonous drau gh t is changed by herfaithful companion Brangacne for the love philter.The reader will perceive at once the immensedramatic force of this version, compared withthe



92 RICHARD WAGNER.

old story, where the fatal potion is taken by a pure

mistake. This potion itself becomes in W ag neronly the symbol of irresistible love, which, to speakw ith the Psalmist, is " strong as d e a t h " andknows of no fetter.*

The further events of the drama are the con-

sistent ou tgrow th of this trag ic gu ilt. The secondact contains the secret meeting of the lovers, whichhas given the composer occasion for a duet, thepathos and sweetness of which rem ain unequa lledin dramatic litera ture . Betrayed by Melot (who

from the mischievous dwarf of older versions ha sbecome a knight and Tristan's false friend) theyare surprised by King Marke, and Tristan, crushedby the sad reproach of his benefactor, makes afeigned attack on Melot, who in return pierces

his defenceless breast. In the th ird and last actTristan is discovered lying in a state of uncon-sciousness at his castle in B ritt an y . H is reta ine r,Kvnvenal, has sent a messenger to Isolde, who oncebefore has cured Tristan from the effects of a

* It ought to be mentioned that the same fine touch oftreating the love potion as an entirely accidental matter,which occasions, but does not cause the affection betw een th eill-fated couple, is also found in the mediaeval German poet.



RICHARD WAGNER. 9 3

terrible wound. Tristan awakes, and on being

told of Isolde's approach, tears, in an ecstasy ofjoy, the bandage from his wound, which causeshis

death at the moment when his lost love comesto

his rescue. Isolde expires on the body of her

lover.

Our selection consistsof the introduction to thedrama, and the dying scene (Liebestod) of Isolde.The former piece is founded on one single motiveof intensely passionate impressiveness, whichis

worked out thematically into various and,at the

same time, concentrated shapesof great melodiousbeauty. The same melody forms a prominentfeature of the music drama, and appears as" leadingmotive " wherever the composer wishesto suggestthe idea of the love potion, or, as we have seen,of

irres istib le passion. Toits strains also the namesof Tristan and Isolde are uttered for the first timein fond whispering ju st after the fatal draughthas been drained. W e quoteit here in full—

Langsam und schmacMend.



94

\

RICHARD WAGNER.

-dim.cresc.

i

itr-

==5-

T . ?"



RICHARD WAGNER. 95

The dying scene of Isolde is conceived by the

composer as a kind of sad echo of the happy unionof the lovers in the second act. The principalmotives of the latter scene reappear in the

orchestral part as a fond remembrance of lostbliss, accompanied by the broken utterances of the

voice. At the same time we have to recognisein th is retrospective introduction of the samemotives a symbolic expression of the lovers' re-

union after death, quiteas simple and significant asthe intertwining rose and vine which grow on their

graves in the old story.On the opening motive, which displays the

broad, deeply coloured melodiousnessof Wagnerin its full splendour, we might inscribe as mottoFreiligrath's expression of " B u h e in der Ge-

liebten," i. e\, the becalmed contentment in lovewhich follows after and again leadsto the climaxof passion. To illustrate its meaning more fully,we quote the verses which it is employed to

illustrate in the second act:

So starben wir, um ungetrennt,ewig einig ohne End,ohn' Erwachen ohn' Erbangen,namenlos in Lieb' umfangen,ganz uns selbst gegebeii,der Liebe nur zu leben.



96 RICHARD WAGNER.

-J J.

pp trem.

- © - < - • - 1 P

r> a i

i f ~ 1 P"

This motive is worked up into the following

phrase, in which the double turn adds greatlytoits sweet impressiveness, and is to be taken as anessential part of the melody, and not as a merefioriture.

r-=i^,fct5

dolce.

- I I u

=



98 RICHARD WAGNER.

consisted in the resumption of the scheme of the

comic opera sketched by us in the foregoing pages.The rewriting of the text, and the compositionof the music to the ' M astersingers ,' occupied himat intervals from the end of 1861 to 1867 , in th eOctober of which year the score was finished.

From that day to this the full energy of "Wagnerhas been dedicated to the final completion,and the prepa ration for an even tual performanceof his Nihelungen. I t w as natu ral tha t in thepresent condition of the German stage, with its

motley programme of classic, romantic, French,German, Italian, serious, comic, and burlesqueoperas, a satisfactory representation of a work ofthis kind could not be expected. N eith er thesinger who had to act, nor the hearer who attended,

at a performance of La Favorita on Tuesday, andwas looking forward to Meyerbeer's Africaine—or, better still, to Offenbach's Belle Helene—on theensuing Sunday, were likely to raise their receptivefaculties for the intervening days of the week to

conceptions like those ofl Siegfried' and 'Brunhilde'in the Dusk of the Gods. Wagner, therefore, for along time despaired of the visible realisation of h isideas, and strongly opposed the performances of



RICHARD WAGNER. 99

separate parts of his work attempted at Munich.

It was only a few yea rs ago th a t the late celebratedpianist Charles Tamig, one of the master's mostzealous adherents, in connection with a smallnumber of his ar tis tic friends, confidently decidedupon appealing to the admirers of Wagner ' s art

amongst his own and other nations for the necessarymeans of carrying out the composer's original idea,viz., to perform the Nlbelungen at a theatre to be

erected for the purpose, and by a select companyin the manner of a great national festival, and

before an audience, which in this way would be,like the artists themselves, entirely removed fromthe atmosphere of ordinary theatrical shows.

The national and artistic import of the workitself, combined with the irresistible sway which

Wagner 's genius began to evince more and moreover the best amongst his nation, seemed to warran tthe boldness of this design; and the appeal was,

indeed, responded to with great enthusiasm, far

beyond the limits of his own country.

Wagner societies were founded not only in themost important German cities,but also in Milan,Brussels, London, New York, etc.; and at the

present moment the realisation of the scheme at

H 2



ioo RICHARD WAGNER.

Bayreuth in the spring of 1875 seems no longer

doubtful. The performance of the tetralogy willbeprepared and conducted by Wagner himself, who

in this way will be enabledto render the highestaspirations of his soul, called into life and madereal in the ideal world of the drama.

It would, of course, be premature to judge aboutthe artistic import and effect of a work like this,before it has been embodied in the shapes of the

stage, for which it seems so eminently destined.I will consider it here from one, viz., the his-

torical point of view ; and this also onlyin so far asit marks in a manner the final result of our re-

searches, the concluding link of t ha t "c i r cu lus"which, as we have seen, is the symbol of progressin art as well as in all other human things. I am

speaking of the strange analogy between Wagner'sNibelungen and the drama of the antique stage,which I perceive in the following three importantpoints:—first, the relative position of poetryand music, the latter of which in both Wag-

ner's and Sophocles' drama is strictly limitedto receiving and idealising the intentions of the

sister art, on which it never intrudes the conditionsof its own separate existence.



RICHARD WAGNER. 101

A second point of resemblance seems to me to

exist between the chorus of the antique andtheorchestra of the modern tragedy, paradoxicalasthis may appear at first sight; for the orchestralpart, which by Wagner has been raised from thesecondary position of a mere accompaniment of the

voices into an important factor of the dramaticorganism, is enabled by his masterly treatment torender in its varied measures the lyrical andre-flective elements of the action, resembling in thisrespect the an tique chorus much more closely, than

the hackneyed exclamations of combined joy orgrief which the choral singers of the orthodoxopera are wont to utter.

As th e last and most importan t parallelism,wemention the mythical foundation, which in both

dramas forms the ideal background of the individualaction. From th is "Wagner himself expectstherevival of modern art, and through it of nationallife in a manner too ideal, perhaps, to be everrealised in our actual existence, but which will

always be counted amongst the most beautifuldreams of human genius. Quod felix faustum fortu-.natumque sit.



102 RICHARD WAGNER.

Here ends what it was my present purpose tosay about the personal character and artistic deedsof a man, whose importance in the progress ofmusic, whateve r view one may take of it, is

certainly of too deep a nature to be finally judgedby contemporary criticism . I am myself bu t tooconscious of the sketchy nature of my account, bu tcannot suppress at the same time a hope, th a t th ereader may have recognised in my rough outline

the features of a grand immortal countenance,wrought by nature's own hands, and stamped byher with the indelible sign of ge ni u s; a " h e r o "and " swallower of form ulas" in th e most em phaticsense Mr. Carlyle ever imparted to that word, but

at the same time endowed w ith th e gift of re -constructing what was eternal in the destroyedfabric, after a plan of his own form and fashion—aman, in short, whom you may love or hate intensely,but whom you must reckon with in one way or

another, if not the book of artistic revelation shallbe for ever sealed to you with seven seals.

It would be intruding too much upon the con-fidence of th e reade r if, after th e many statem en ts



104 RICHARD WAGNER.

the importance of the question at stake was at once

recognised by the fact of several of our mostinfluential journals raising their voiceson the sub-

ject.* I am alluding in particular to a leadingarticle in the 'Daily News, ' which exhibited all

the literary skill, but (if I may judge in my own

case) not quite the more than common musicalappreciation, by which that journal is so favourablydistinguished. The popular prejudices of whichthe article made itself the mouthpiece may be

summed up in the double assertion, that what I

had designated as the fundamental idea of the" m u s i c of the fu tu re" was wanting in "any

genuine novelty;" and, further, that if the poeticalprinciple insisted upon were carried out, it wouldmake all instrumental music impossible,and, more-

over, lead in its ultimate consequences to thedestruction of both arts.

I t may be hoped that the attentive reader willbe in a position to judge about these objections

* I am told, that some years ago an article on a similarsubject appeared in the ' Westminster Review ;' but as thisseems to have passed comparatively unnoticed,I think I may,without presumption, lay claim to the honour of having forthe first time drawn the attention of a wider circle of Englishreaders to Wagner's creations.



RICHARD WAGNER. 105

according to their merits; still, in order to go quite

safe, I will insert my reply to the editor of the' Daily N e w s' :

" It is far from my wish, to enter into any kind of contro-versy about the value of the ' music of the future ' in general,or about the originality of what I think to be its fundamentalJ

dea. I know very well that whatis generally called a ' newidea ' is never invented bya single individual. Its compoundshave been singly hovering in the air, as it were, felt andknown by many, either in the form of a doctrine of thelearned, or even in that of a popu lar truism. Stillit remainsthe task of genius to develop its disjecta membra into anorganic whole ; and,if the idea is of an artistic kind, to proveits vitality by an act of creation. In this sense, and in thissense only, I claimed for "Wagner the honour or dishonour(whichever it may be) of having urged theoretically, andshown by his creative productions, the necessity of a poeticalbasis of music. The meaning1 of the word ' poetical ' in suchcombination, differs essentially fromthe sense in which the

word is generally used, and thisnuance, perhaps not sufficientlyexplained by me, has, I think, given rise to some mis-apprehension in your article. By ' poetical ' I mean only theoriginal passionate impulse, which every artist must feel,andwhich he tries to embody in his work, be it by means ofarticulate words, sounds, or colours. In this sense everyartist must be first a poe t ; and without such a fundamentalconception, poetry proper will degenerate into mere rhyming,painting into the worat kind of meaninglessgenre, and musicinto a shallow display of sound, or ' Musikmacherei ' as theGermans appropriately call it. Of this original impulsemusic had lost hold for a long time, chiefly owing to the



io6 RICHARD WAGNER.

destructive influence of the Ita lian operatic stage of the las tcentury. Even in great composers like Mozart or Haydn, thepoetical idea was encumbered by the strict forms of absolutemusic. My meaning is, to be quite explicit, that they wouldconceive a melody, perhaps full of sentiment, and certainlyfull of beauty of sound, and developit exclusively with a viewto displaying such beauties. It was Beethoven who firstdistinctly felt, and Waguer who first expressedin words, the

necessity of a previous ' poetical' impulse to which the formsof music proper would have to yield. The unim paired vitalityof pure instrumental music,on these grounds, is of courseobvious, it being altogether a secondary consideration whetherthe * poetical basis' be expressed in words or not. Muchless is the possibility of poetry asa separate art denied by theabove theory. Still it is equally true that where a thoroughblending of words and music is effected, and most of allin thedrama, the very essence of which is passionate impulse,the common effort of both arts will be of a higher kindthan is ever attainable by either in its individual sphere.Both have to resign some of their peculiarities,but both gainnew strength and beauty in their supreme surrender. They

are not, to adopt the equestrian simile of your contributor,' two riders on the same horse, where oneor the other mustride behind,' but rather like two noble steeds drawing withdouble force and swiftness the fiery chariot of divine pathos."

The whole error, I will add here, seemsto me to

arise from the mixing up on the w riter's p art,of artas a revelation to the inspired individual mind,and art as the result of the labour of generations,with a certain amount of rules and principles not



RICHARD WAGNER. 107

unlike the dogmas of an established religious creed.

Every artist, if he wishes to deserve his name,m ust be a perfect master of these forms and rule s,the va lue of which for the most favourable displayof th e peculiar powers of the ar t in question, be itmusic, po etry, or pa inting , cannot be overrated.

But it must be always borne in mind, that the fireof individual inspiration is of divine nature, and, assuch, superior in essence to all the accumulatedwisdom and skill of the world, entitling, nay, com-pelling the true artist to find, if necessary, unknown

modes of expression for his new lore . In thissense m ust also be understood w hat has been saidabou t "Wagner's break ing thro ugh the forms ofabsolute music, which he knows how to apply forhis purpose w ith grea ter skill, tha n any other living

master, but which he abandons in case of need,and repudiates with the same courage and zealas Luther and Calvin did the grooves of Popishdogmatism.

A second point of vital importance, raised against

W ag ne r by his enemies, is the alleged absencefrom his sty le of melody, which, as it is said, andrightly said, must be considered the most unfailingtest of all music . I t would of course be useless to



108 RICHARD WAGNER.

assert or prove, a priori, a thing the existence of

which after all one can believe only to his ownsense of hearing. Still, the present author has

often tried to account for a phenomenon, which is

all the more astonishing to him, as he considersmelody the very essence of Wagner 's music, and is

prepared to point out quite as many specimens ofbeautiful cantilena in Tannhduser or Tristan as in

Bon Giovanni or / / Barbiere. The causes of this ex-

traordinary want of perception, seem to him to lie

chiefly in two important features of Wagner ' s art,

not to mention the intentional ill-willof party-preju-diced hearers, which explainsof course everything.

One of these causes is, strange to say, the con-

tinuous flow of melodious beau ty which charac-terises our master's creations, and which makes it

much more difficult to single out a particularmotive in his works, than, for instance, in the

Italian opera, where a snatch of fine cantilenaappears like an oasis in the desert of recitativisecchi. Moreover, in Wagner melody and harmony

are so closely connected with the dramatic action,that their separate existence becomes imperceptiblymixed up with the general harmony of the workof art as a whole.



no RICHARD WAGNER.

the story appears in a queer collection of riddles,

repartees, and legends of various kinds, which arebrought into a loose connection by an imaginaryprize-singing at Wartburg, where they are laidin the mouths of the most celebrated poets ofthe period. Our story is supposed to be told by

the great m inne-singer, W olfram von Eschenbach ,whose representative poem, ' Parcival, ' might sug-gest such an arrangement to the compilator ofthe ' Wartburgkr ieg. ' It would be a task ofgreat interest, to dissect this late production intoits

heterogeneous parts, and also to show how farWagner has altered and remodelled for his drama-tic treatment the main features of his mediaevaloriginal. From this , however, we must refrain,and limit ourselves to the consideration of Wa g -

ne r's poem, as we actually findit, without furtherinquiries as to its genesis.

The ideal background, from w hich the joy sandsorrows of the human actors in Lohengrin are re-flected with supernal light,is the conception of the

H oly Graalitself, the mystic symbol of Christian faith,or, in a wider sense, of everything divine and great,as it reveals itself to the ecstatic eye of th e pure andself-surrendering soul. Such an act of revelation



RICHARD WAGNER. nr

is the subject of th e instrum ental prelude, which

serves our opera as an ove rture. Th e prelude, andin a certain sense the opera itself, are basedon one melodious phrase—the Gracd-motive, as wew ill call it— or one m igh t even say on th e change ofthe two chords (that of A major andF sharp minor)

which form the harmonious foundationof this pro-minent melody. To explain the full meaningofthis, we must here add a few words about what, inWagner's operas, is generally called the {Leitmotiv)leading motive or melody. For every important

idea or passionate impulseof his characters, Wag-ner introduces a certain striking harmoniousormelodious combination, as the musical complementof the ir dram atic force. W herev er in the courseof the drama this impulse comes into action, we

hear at once its corresponding motive, eithe r sungby the voice or played by the orchestra, and inmanifold variations, according to circumstances.The opening chorus of the pilgrims, interrupted bythe wild rhythm s of the Venusberg, as the rep re-

sentative melodies of the good and evil principles,in the overture to Tann/iduser, or the Romance inthe Flying Dutchman,may serve the English readeras examples of leading motives. The great in-



ii2 RICHARD WAGNER.

crease of intensity and dramatic unity which is

thus effected in the musical conception of acharacter or idea is of course obvious. A similarrepetition of melodies was previously applied, butonly in a very occasional and undecided manner,by W eber, M eyerbeer, and others. As a distinct

principle of art it is entirely due to Wagner ' screative genius.

The prelude toLohengrin opens w ith a long drawnchord of the violins in the h ighest octaves, continuedwith the tenderest pianissimo through several bars.

I t is like the th in w hite clouds floatingin a serenesky, shapeless as yet, and scarcely discernible fromthe ethereal blue surrounding them . B u t suddenlythe violins sound, as from the furthest distance,and in continued pianissimo, the Graal motive, and

at once the clouds take form and motion. O urinner eye discovers a group of angels as they ap-proach us, slowly descending from the height ofheaven, and carrying in their midst the holyvessel. Sweetest harmonies float around them ,

gradually increasing in warmth and variety, tillatlast, with the fortissimo of the full orchestra,the sacred mystery in all its overpowering splen-dour is revealed to our enchanted eyes. After this-



RICHARD WAGNER. 113

climax of religious ecstasy the harmonious waves

begin to recede, and with their ebbing motiontheangels gradually, as they have come, return to

their celestial abode. Such was, according to

Wagner ' s own indication, the poetical, or one

might almost say pictorial, idea which suggested

the sublime harmonies of his prelude, and neverhave the sweetnesses and shudderingsof Christianmysticism been m ore fully expressed than in thistriumph of instrumental music.

The fresh allegro at the opening of the first act,

leads us back from the sphere of transcendental in-spiration into the stream of actual life, and whenthe curtain rises we see King Henry of Germanysurrounded by his feudal vassals and retainers,on a

meadow by the side of the Scheldt, near Antwerp.

He has assembled the noblesof Brabant, to call ontheir faithful services against the savage Hunga-rians, the most dangerous enemies of the empire,and at the same time to mediate in their internaldissensions. The cause of these troubles we hear

from the mouth of Count Telramund, a great noble,who accuses Elsa, Princess of Brabant, of havingmurdered her infant brother duringa solitary walk,from which she alone returned, pretendingto have

1



ii4 RICHARD WAGNER.

lost sight of him in the wood. The m otive of this

black deed he finds in Elsa's affection for a secretlover, with whom she hopesto share the rule of thecountry after her brother's death.

This rule, however, Tc lramund claimsfor him-

self, on the ground of his having been chosen by

the late duke as Elsa's husband, although theproud maiden spurned his addresses. He alsoalleges that his present wife, Ortrud, is a scion of

the old heathenish Dukes of Friesland, who oncereigned over the country. The musical part of

this scene is treated in a kind of continuous arioso,resembling most the recitativo obligato of the

regular opera, but showing an immense progressupon it as regards power and accuracyof declama-tion. Te lramund 's impeachmentof Elsa reminds us

in its simple gran deu r of the grave accents of theantique drama. Of leading motives we may men-tion that representing the king, which consistsof akind of fanfare, and throughout occurs in the keyof C major.

At the king's command Elsa now appears beforehim, accompanied by a few plaintive notes of sweetmelodiousness in the orchestra. They soon pass overinto a new theme, which might be called thedream-



RICHARD WAGNER. 115

motive, for it is to its strains th at Elsa relates, how

a knight of heavenly beauty has appearedto her ina trance, promising his assistance in defending her

innocence. The same knight she now choosesfor

her champion in the ordeal which has been grantedby the kin g on Telram und's demand. H ere again

the different passions of the chief characters—Telramund's hatred, Elsa's unshakable confidence,the king's compassion, and the echo of thesefeelings in the hearts of the mult i tude—areren-

dered by the music in the finest nuances. The

dramatic climax is reached when after the secondcall of the herald, and during Elsa's ferventprayer, there suddenly appears, first in the far

distance, but quickly approaching, a boat drawnby a w hite swan, and in it, leaning on his shield,a

knight as Elsa has seen him in her vision. Thechange from doubt and wildest astonishmentto joy

and triumphant belief, as expressed in a choralpiece of the grandest conception, makes this sceneone of the grea tes t effects d ram atic m usic has ever

achieved, and one is not astonished at reading ofthe shouts and tum ults of enthusiastic applause,with which the impulsive Italian audience greetedthe appearance of Lohengrin at the first perform-ance of the opera at Bologna.

I - I



n6 RICHARD WAGNER.

It ought also to be mentioned that a great part

of this overpowering impression is due to themasterly arrangement of the scenic effect, as it isprescribed in its minutest details by the composerhimself.

As soon as Lohengrin leaves his boat, a perfect

calm follows the outbreak of clamorous joy, andevery one listens in respectful silence as he bidsfarewell to the swan, his faithful guide throughthe perils of the deep. After this Lohengrinloudly declares the falseness of Telramund's accu-

sation, and asks Elsa's hand as the prize of hisvalour to be exercised in her defence. B u t beforethe battle begins she must promise him nevertoask a question about his being or the place fromwhence he came to her rescue. W it h this demand

of implicit belief we have reached the tragic key-note of the drama, and its importanceis musicaltyindicated by a new melody of gravest rhythmicalstructure, the motive of warning. "When Elsagrants and promises everythingin self-surrendering

confidence, Lohengrin himself, who hitherto seemedsurrounded by inapproachable sublim ity, is over-come by her sweet innocence, and breaks out inthe passionate words of " Elsa, I love thee !"



RICHARD WAGNER. 117

Here again the effect of the musical interpretation

leaves any description in words far beh ind. Therest of the act is chiefly taken up by Lohengrin'seasy victory over Telramund, and a grandensembleexpressive of trium phan t joy, which in its struc-ture resembles the traditional form of the finale.

When the curtain rises a second time we seeTelramund , whose life has been saved by his ad-versary's m agnanimity, and Ortrud lying prostratein despa iring hatre d on the steps of the roya lpalace, the illuminated windows of which, com-

bined w ith th e festive noise of a banquet, increasethe dreary darkness outside. The ensuing duet ismusically founded on a new motive, which is meantto represent the evil principle of heathenish hatredand revenge, as opposed to the heavenly pur ity of

th e Graal-motive. For O rtru d now discloses he r-self as the representative of old Friesish paganism,who by he r falsehood and witchcraft has led he rhusband to the accusation of the innocent Christianmaiden. W e confess that the introduction in a by-

the-way m anner of the two great religious prin-ciples seems to us not particularly happy, and itcannot be denied that the character of Ortrud her-self, although grand in its dramatic conception, has



RICHARD WAGNER. n 9

The scene is evidently suggested by the quarrel of

th e two queens in the ISTibelungenlied, and, althoughfine in itself, loses somewhat by its parallelismwith the one next following, when Telramundsuddenly appears and accuses Lohengrinof havingbeen victorious by the means of hellish witchcraft,

daring him at the same time to lift the veil ofm ystery han ging around him. Lohengrin proud lycontemns the slander of an outlaw, appealing toElsa as his sole judge on ea r th ; and, after shehas expressed her unshaken confidence, the twice

interrupted procession reaches its destination.The third act introduces us into the bridal

chamber of the newly-united pair. It beginswith the outpourings of unimpaired love andhappiness. But soon the evil seed of doubt,

sown by Ortrud's calumnious insinuations, beginsto grow. In all her bliss Elsa feels there issom ething strange standing between herselfandher lord, embittering the sweetness of her lovew ith secret m isgivings. The way in which this

at first shy and subdued feeling is worked upgradually to the pitch of irrepressible curiosity is amasterpiece of psychological characterisation. Thecalming and imploring words of her saviour and



120 RICHARD WAGNER.

lover, accompanied by the solemn repetition of the

motive of warning—nay, even the heroic feelings-of her own heart, that wishes to share any possibledangers, are with wom anly logic turn ed intoarguments for asking a question, which must lead tothe certain misery of bo th. A t last, ju s t when she

has uttered the fatal words, Count Telramundrushes into the room w ith two other assassins,bu t, is easily slain by Loh engrin 's sword, w hichElsa hands to her husband.

The last scene shows again the same meadow by

the Scheldt as in the first act. K ing H enry andhis vassals are preparing for their departure to thewar. B ut their knigh tly joy is interrup ted bythe corpse of Telramund being carried into theirpresence. Soon Elsa and, after he r, Lohengr in

appear. By his wife's unfortunate rashness he isnow compelled to disclose his origin and name,as Lohengrin Parcival's son, the K nig ht of theGraal. The piece in which th is is done, sho w ingthe Graal-motive in its fullest development, and

the impressive melody of his parting song, areamongst the most beautiful parts of the opera.The next following incident is, we must confess,not quite satisfactory, and almost seems to verge



RICHARD WAGNER. 121

on the melodramatic. Fo r suddenly O rtrud tu rn s

up and tells the astonished audience that the swan,which reappears in the distance, is no other thanElsa 's brother, who has been bewitched by herselfinto this form, but would have been releasedwithout his sister's indiscretion; now he is

doomed for ever. But in this last emergencythe divine power intervenes again. Loheng rinkneels clown in silent prayer, and when he risesthe swan has disappeared, and a beautiful youth,the Duke of Brabant, stands by his side. Elsa

flies to his embrace, and dies in his a r m s ;while the boat of Lohengrin, drawn by a whitedove, and accompanied by the plaintive notes ofthe Graal-motive in A minor chords, disappearsin the distance.

This is the end of Wagner ' s Lohengrin. W ehave tried to convey a clear idea of its poetical andmusical structure to the reader's mind, as far aslanguage can express at all the effects of an art,which by its very essence frustrates an adequate

description by words. W e have readily acknow-ledged the high beauties of the work, withoutconcealing its faults and shortcomings. In thehistory of the opera it marks an immense pro-



122 RICHARD WAGNER.

gress upon its own and any other author's previous

works, by the com parative emancipation of itsmeans of expression from th e forms of absolutemusic, by the greater un ity and force of dram aticcharacterisation as bro ught about by wha t we calledthe leading motive, and lastly by the richness and

beau ty of its melodious and harm onious combinations.Lohengrin has carried the name of its au thor toItaly, the land of song, and one would hail it withwelcome, if the k night of the swan were equallydestined to be the champion of the music of the

future in this countrv.



II.

It is old and plain ;

The spinsters and the knitters in the sun,

And the free maids that weave their thread with bones,

Do use to chant i t : it is silly sooth,

And dallies with the innocence of love

Like the old age.

Twelfth Night; or, What you will.



CHAPTER II.

PKANZ SCHUBEKT.

1.IN glancing thro ug h the history of gen ius, wenotice in many cases a strange coincidence betweenits individual character and the soil from which ittakes its origin, and by which its growth is supplied

w ith the most appropriate nourishm ent. Some-times it must be confessed, Providence seems toact in a most severe and arbitrary manner; butit w ill alm ost always be found, th at even th eharshest treatment ultimately redounds to the

purified regeneration of its seeming victims.Dante was banished from his beloved Florenceby the ha tred of political enemies, bu t th epersonal sting of revengeful invective forms one



126 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

of the grandest features in his divine poem.

"The United States ," Baudelaire says, "wereto Ed gar Poe a vast prison, a w ild cou ntry,barbarous and gaslit ." True , to some e x te n t;bu t would he, in a more congenial atmosphere,have been able to stamp upon his creations th a t

anathematic inscription of " N ev er a chanc e,"which forms th eir indescribable charm ?

Schube rt's na ture was not of a k ind toreceive additional zest from combating with op-position and envy. H is impulsive gen ius would

have w ithered in the cold thou gh t-strickenatmosphere of the no rt h ; and we m ay call ithis first and greatest piece of luck, to have beenborn in the very centre of warm-blooded southGerm an life, at Vienna on t he 31st Jan ua ry ,

1797. H is father was schoolmaster of th e parish ofL ich ten tha l in that city, and his two matrimonialengagements were blessed with that fertility ofpropagation, which seems to be the enviable lotof th is in m any respects peculiarly favoured class.H is offspring by his first wife am ounted tofourteen children both male and female, ofwhich fortunately only four boys and one girlreached the years of discretion, our composer



128 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

beam of light on the m orning hou rs of an

awakening genius. " W hen he was five," thefather says, " I prepared him for elem entary in-struction ; at six I made h im ente r m y school,where he was always the first amongst hisfellows." Th is noble zeal in th e acqu iring of

useful general knowledge, we are obliged toconfess, abated very soon. B u t another featureof his character which was to last him throughlife we find strongly indicated in this sketch." A t this age already ," father Schubert continues,

"he used to be very fond of society, and wasnever more happy than in the midst of a numberof joyous friends."

Fin ding himself soon unable to keep pace w iththe rapid progress of Franz's musical talent, his

father sent him to one Michael Holzer, organist of theLichtenthal parish, who was to give him lessons onthe piano and organ, and also to introduce him intothe intricacies of harmony and thorough bass.This master also soon discovered th e un usual gifts

of his new pup il. Lovers of anecdote w ill bedelighted to know that one day good old Mr. Holzerwas heard to exclaim (his disciple w ork ing out inthe m eanwhile the them e of a fugue on the piano) :



FRANZ SCHUBERT. I3g

u He has all the harmony I wanted to teach him in

his little finger; whenever I was going to tell himanything, he was sure to know it already."

The next important step in our hero's musicalappren ticeship, is marked by his obtaining a placeas soprano chorister in the imperial 'CapelieJ with

which was connected a scholarship at one of thebest municipal schools of Vienna, called the1 Stadtconvict. ' In October, 1808, Schubert, w ithseveral other competitors, presented himself forexam ination before the conductors of theCajyelle,

Salieri and E yb ler. H is costume was in ac-cordance w ith the limited means of his father,anything but recherche, and excited at first theh ila rity of the other boys. H e wore, it seems, ahuge light grey coat of undefinable shape, sug-

gestin g the idea of flour-dust in the minds of hisfellow-competitors, who playfully called him theu little m iller." B ut these untim ely jokes soonceased, when the little miller raised his little voiceand began to sing a t first sight the m ost difficult

pieces, and also answered all questions about har-mony and thorough bass with astonishing sagacity,so th at the vote in his favour was given unanimously.It is likely that most of the boys then present lived



130 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

to witness the tr iumphs of those other "miller

songs," which were to gain immortal fame for theirauthor in the wider arena of both hemispheres.

Schubert was adm itted into the ' S tadt co nv ic t 'chiefly on the grounds of his beautiful sopranovoice, but his considerable skill on the violin,

acquired in his father's house, opened to him atthe same time the little orchestra connected withth a t school. Soon he was raised to the dign ity ofhonorary conductor of his fellow-pupils. I n th isway he became practically acquainted with the

treasures of German symphonic literature, andrevelled in the melodious beauties of Haydn andMozart, while the works of his great contemporary,Beethoven, filled him from the first with reverentialawe. In other respects the progress of Sc hubert's

studies was less satisfactory. M usic had engrossedhis intellectual being so entirely, that time andinterest for mathematics, classics, and other branchesof useful knowledge, as taught at th e school, wereentirely w anting. W he n, in 18 13 , his childishtreble began to break, and he had to give up hisappointment as a chorister in consequence, Schubertdid not avail himself of th e permission to continuehis general studies at the l Stadtconvict. ' l ie



FRANZ SCHUBERT. 131

returned to his father's house, where,for the next

three years, he was employed as assistant usherin" teaching the young idea how to shoot,"in so faras such shooting may be directed by the oraclesofthe spelling-book and similar sources of elementarywisdom.

The life of Schubert during his stay at the' Stadtconvict' does not essentially differ from thatof ordinary schoolboys. H is grea test trouble seemsto have been a state of chronic impecuniosity, withoccasional acute attacks of the same evil. D ur ing

one of these, he writes to his brother Ferdinandthe following piteous begging letter,in which hisundisturbable good humour is displayedin the slymanner, characteristic also of his r iper years:" Let me come to the point at once," he exclaims,

" w ithout keeping you in suspense. I have beenpondering over my situation for a long time, andfind it to be quite tolerable on the whole; it would,however, seem to allow of an occasional slightim-provem ent. You know, by experience, that a fellow

would like at times a roll and an apple or two,especially if after a frugal dinner he has to wait fora meagre supper for eight hours and a half.

The few groschen thatI receive from my father are



132 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

always gone to the devil the first day, and what am

I to do afterwards ? * Those who hope will not beconfounded,' says the Bible, and I firmly believe it.Supposing, for instance, you send me a couple ofkreutzers a month, I don't th ink you would noticethe difference in your own purse, and I should live

quite content and happy in my cloister. St. M atthewsays also that whosoever has two coats shall giveone to the poor. In the meantime, I tru st you willlend your ear to the voice, crying to you incessantlyto remember your poor brother Franz, who loves

and confides in you."A more serious inconvenience arising from

Schubert's continual want of funds, was the impos-sibility of procuring a sufficient am ount of m usicpaper, necessary to reap th e harvest of melodious

and harmonious ideas, w ith which he began to beinspired at this early period. I t would be difficultto realise th e tragicomic significance of th issituation. Imagine a man in the midst of all th eriches of the valley of diamonds, but without the

means of carrying the useless pelf to inhabitedquarters, and you may understand to some ex ten t thedespair of this youth, on whom the muse hadshowered her highest gifts, forgetting only to pro-



FRANZ SCHUBERT. 133

vide him with the clumsy necessaries of earthly

existence. In this particular casewe are told thatfriendship soon stepped in and supplied the youngcomposer with the practical implements of his

art.

Wi th th i s we touch upon an important element

in Schubert's life, viz., his strong feeling for thecharms of friendship. From the impulsively lyricalcharacter of his works, one might expect that all

the fibres of his heart would have tended towardsthat half of mankind, from which the strongest and

purest feelings take their origin,and to which theyreciprocally appeal most. But, no; we shall haveto mention on more than one occasion the ties of

real friendship, which joined him to a greatmany contemporary artistsand poets, while on the

other hand the influence of what Goethe calls the" eternal fem inin e" seems to have been all but

wanting, if we except a few ephemeral attachmentsof a sligh t order. Schubert even used to chaff his

friends on the subject of their numerous liaisons,

and often received them withthe ironical question:" W h i c h one is it n o w ? " The most importantconnection formed by him during his school time,was with his principal master, the conductor of the



FRANZ SCHUBERT. 135

A nd now I would fain introduce the reader

to another, the last scene of this man's life,which tells its own tale of impressive morality.W e find it in the autobiographical sketches ofMoscheles' life, which, some time ago, have beenarranged and published by the loving and skilful

hand of his widow. On re turning to Vienna, aftera long absence, Moscheles was told that his reveredmaster, Salieri, was lying dangerously ill in a publichospital. H e at once applied for the necessary pass-po rt from Salieri's dau ghter and the hosp ital au tho -

ritie s. Th is permission seems to have been got w ithsome difficulty, there being scarcely any oneadm itted to the patien t, w ho himself did no t careto receive many visitors. " O u r meeting ,' ' Moschelessays, " w a s sad to the utmost. I was terrified by

his looks. H e spoke only in ab rupt sentencesabou t his imm inent death . A t last he burst out,' A lthou gh I know this to be my last illness, I canassure you, on my honour, that there is nothingin that absurd ru m o u r; you know— M ozart—

the y say I have poisoned him. No, n o ; nothingbu t malevolence, m alevo lence ! Do go, dearMoscheles, and tell the world that old Salierihas said this to you on his death-bed. '"



136 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

Moscheles adds, that he withdrew in haste, in order

to hide his tears. There is, indeed, som ething in-describably touching and awful in the last wordsof this dying man. H aunted by revengeful visions,he tries to defend himself in his v iolen tly ut te redbroken German, agains t the un just suspicion of a

physical crime, while perhaps his inmost soul wassmitten with the consciousness of a wrong ofblacker dye : poisonous envy and obdura te resist-ance against the revelations of genius.

Eeturning now to Schubert's career, we have to

go back several years, in order to witness the firstindications of his creative power. If we maybelieve his brother Ferdinand, he wrote his firstextensive piece for the pianoforte, a ' Fantasiafor four ha nd s,' at the age of th irte en , and his first

song, the ' K lagegesang der H agar, ' the ' Com plaintof Hagar,' in the following year, not to mention anum ber of less important productions, w hich seemto belong to a still earlier da te. This precociousdevelopment of Schubert, marve llous as it may

seem, is still surpassed by his astonish ingfertility, which also began to manifest itself at anearly period of his life. The year 1812 , the fif-teen th of his life, gave b irth to the following com -



FRANZ SCHUBERT. 137

positions : one Salve Reg ina, one E y ri e E leison,one

trio for pianoforte, violin, and violoncello, twoquatuors for string instruments, two overtures, one

andante with variations, thirty minuets, and,

strange to say, only one song. And this year was

by no means an unusually fertile one. In over-

looking the catalogue of Schubert's compositions>the titles of which fill alone something like fortyodd pages, and which comprise all the differentforms of musical art from the valse to the grandopera, one feels inclined to think that the mere

copying out of such a quantity of notes wouldrequire a lifetime. Indeed, his nine symphoniesand seventeen dramatic works, partlyor completelyfinished, might be considered a satisfactory resultof the sixteen years over whichhis creative period

extended. Nevertheless, these worksare of smallimportance, compared with the chamber musicand the inexhaustible treasures of song, whichhave been, and are still being, rediscovered amongstthe lumber of amateurs' libraries and publishers'

waste-paper baskets. "We shall have to considerhereafter how this almost unnatural superabund-ance of inve ntive ease acted on the general characterof Schubert's creations. In one case it proved abso-



138 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

lute ly fatal to his prod uc tions ; I am speak ing of

his numerous attempts at dramatic composition.Schubert's first effort in this direction dates as far

back as the ' Stadtconvict.' One of the chief attrac -tions of the young student's holidays was the im-perial opera, w ith its unrivalled orchestra and

excellent singers.Here he was impressed by the charming melo-

dies of "Weigle's Swiss Family, and the sterngrandeur of Gluck's and Cherubini's antique heroesand heroines. The elegant graces of Boild ieu's

Jean de Paris also moved him sympathetically.As might be expected, Schubert soon was filledwith competitive zeal, and decided upon composingan opera of his own. Unfortunately his choice ofa libretto fell upon a/eerie by Kotzebue, the well-

known prolific playwright, called Des TeufelsLustsc/iioss,the Palace of the Devil. The silly wordsof this farce he now began to set to music w ith hisusual verve. The work was finished in no time, butnever saw the light of the stage, and as far as we

may jud ge from our composer's coeval works , andfrom the miserable stupidity of the words, the worldhas lost little by th is neg lect. Indeed , we shouldscarcely mention the juvenile production at all, if it



FRANZ SCHUBERT. 139

did not quite as distinctly as Schubert's later works,

show his vital deficiencies as a dramatic writer.We have stated before that after Beethoven'sre-

formatory influence,as manifested even in the workspublished at that time, a reconstruction of musicalart was possible only on a strictly poetical basis.

This principle, of course, applies foremost to thedrama, which is the highest result of music and

poetry combined. A dramatic composer, therefore,had to be particularly careful in choosing the

poetical basis on which to construct, and according

to the conditions of which to fashion his melodies.Tor this purpose he required more a keen percep-tion of the dramatic bearing of characters and

situations than a surplus store of melodious com-

binations, which, on the contrary, might, and in

Schubert's case did, make him careless in choos-ing the words, on which the beauty of his tunesseemed so little to depend. In consequence, the

firm, not to say harsh emphasis of dramatic expres-sion, so essential to the composer of operatic

music is, in Schubert's operas, drenched andcrushed by the incessant flow of cantilena; and

even his genius cannot atone for the almost incre-dible silliness, un der which most of his l ibrett i



140 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

labour. Besides this, Schubert'sart is always ex-

pressive only of his individual feeling, and all butvoid of that broadness and objectivity of emotionalrendering by which alone the progress of an actioncan be illustrated. His operas, therefore, whereverthey have been acted, have earned but scanty

applause. During his lifetime this might be ac-counted for by the general neglect from which his

works had to suffer at the hands of purblind con-

temporaries. But even after his death, when an

admiring posterity tried too late to atone for this

injustice, it has proved an impossible task for hismost devoted worshippers to persuade themselvesand the world that the unrivalled " singer of songs "

was an equally great composerof operas. Even the

performance of Alfonsoand Estrella1 the ripest fruit

of Schubert's dramatic muse, which took place underLiszt's masterly leadership, couldnot obtain morethan a sticces d?estime from an audienceof enthusiasticadm irers. Qu ite otherwise, where these flowersoflyrical growth were transferred fromthe stormy seat

of dram atic action into the more congenial atmosphereof the concert-hall. H erethe audience donot expect arapid progress andchange of incident, andean rest w ithdelight on the magic charms of Schubert's melodies.



FRANZ SCHUBERT. 141

The present w riter remem bers w ith delight having

taken part, when a student at Leipsic, in the con-ce rt rende ring by am ateurs of one of Schubert'sprettiest operettas, called Der hdusliche Krieg,Anglice Dom estic Warfare. The book is written byJ. E. Castelli, a prolific writer of all kinds of

ephemeral literature, who died not long ago atVienna. I t is certainly silly enough , bu t showssome techn ical skill and a grea t deal of th a t broadhumour which is, or at leastwas, proverbially attri-buted to the Viennese bourgeois. A s illustrating

th e lackadaisical manner in which Schubert carriedon important matters, it may be quoted that henever thou gh t it w orth w hile to acqua int Castelliwith the fact of his having set the libretto,although the two used to meet frequently. The

following short sketch will be sufficient to give anidea of wha t th e p lots of this and, we m ight sayin a generalising way, of most of Schubert's operasare l ik e : —Count H erib ert of L iidenstein, a greatfeudal lord, accompanied by his noble retainers, has

left h is castle for a crusading expedition to Je ru -salem. H is lady does no t approve of the absenceof her lord, ne ither are the spouses of the otherknights edified by their husbands' pious disposi-



i42 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

tions. In consequence, when the imm inent re tu rn

of the weary wanderers from the Holy Land isannounced, the ladies enter into a solemn .leagueand covenant to receive them with the semblance ofcoldest indifference. The knight s unfortua tely areinformed of this tric k by a young foot page, who

has been presen t at the ladies' parliam ent in dis-guise, and they resolve at once to beat their fairenemies w ith the ir own weapons. The first m eetingof the reunited couples is therefore more thanreserved, and the kn igh ts, under th e pretence 'of a

sacred vow, which forbids them all intercourse w iththeir better halves, resort at once to the ban-queting-hall, where they intend to celebrate theoccasion according to the ir late ly acquired bachelorhab its. This homoeopathic trea tm en t soon begins to

tak e effect on the female mind. The ladies arenot a little amazed at the consequences of thei rrash conduct, and their sorrow is bv no meansabated, when the y are informed of an additionalvow taken by their husbands, while in peril of

dea th from the hands of the Turks , to the effecttha t after a short res t at home the y will re tu rn tothe ir sacred duties in the H oly Land and rem ainthe re for the rest of the ir lives. The s tric t fulfil-



FRANZ SCHUBERT. 143

ment of this vow—the ladies are told—can only be

modified by the ir taking up arms themselves, andsharing with their husbands the dangers of a longcampaign. By this time th ey have given up alltheir former ideas of proud defiance, and expressunanimously their willingness to give the demanded

proof of fond devotion. The last scene shows themall, arrayed in knightly attire, and ready to followthe ir lords whithersoever. B y this heroic conductthe hearts of the crusaders are softened at last.They now explain the whole transaction and ex-

press in a final chorus their desire to return to thestate of submissive allegiance beseeming good hus-bands . I t need scarcely be added tha t they aremost kindly received by thei r fair enslavers, whoharmoniously join their voices in the expression of

reconciliation and universal joy, which concludesthe piece.

The sty le of thi s dramatic framework, thereader w ill perceive, is not of a very elevatedorder, and the dialogue in which the action is car-

ried on, bears the same marks of childish and fre-quently coarse jocu larity. Y et there are in itsome amusing and, for the musician, eminentlysuggestive situations, and wherever an opening for



144 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

the expansion of lyrical feeling offers itself,

Schubert has poured out the abundant gush of hissweetest melodies, raising the hea rer,as if by magic,from the commonplace situation of the piece intothe sphere of an ideal world. But the very charmof these lyrical intermezzi shows the composer's

want of dramatic self-constraint. He consideredthe opera, as he did indeed all other forms of

musical art, as the playground of his immediatelyrical impulse, and wrote in consequence onlyenlarged songs,whether he might call them sym-

phonies, or disguise them as dramatic utterances.The difference between subjective and objectiveproduction was entirely hidden to him. In thisway we have to explain the want of unity and con-

centration and the enormous leng th (Schum ann

calls it "heaven ly" ) wh ich mar the effect ofmost of Schubert's larger works. It is always he

himself who speaks and feels; and as there is no

end of what he has to express, he forgets that eventhe most heavenly language may exhaust the

hearer's receptivity.We have now to return to a period of Schubert 's

life, greatly anterior to the events anticipated in our

deviatory rem arks. He has ju s t left the (Stadtcon-



FRANZ SCHUBERT. 145

v i c t ' and m ade his entrance into life, w ith no

resources except the treasures of his genius.These no t be ing easily convertible into the coinof the land, he saw himself compelled to earnhis bread as best he m ight. W e have mentionedbefore, how he re turn ed to his father's house,

whom he assisted in the drilling of his pupils."We can imagine how intensely his sensitive andretir ing na ture must have suffered amongst a bois-terous herd of uneducated urchins. There were,however, lighter points in this sombre picture.

His father and several of his brothers were, as wehave seen, industrious worshippers of the ' divineart, ' and already, during Franz's schooltime, thereexisted a Schubert family quartett, in which thefather played the violoncello, the two brothers,

Ign atz and Ferdinand , the first and second violin, andour composer the viola. I t is told tha t Franz, beingthe youngest, but by far the most musical memberof the party, used invariably to notice the mistakesth a t were made. In case of his father being the

culprit, he generally remained silent in the firstinstance, and only, when the mistake was repeatedin the parallel passage, he used to interrupt theproceedings w ith th e modest re m ar k : " I think,



i46 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

Sir, there must be something wrong here,"

whereat worthy old Schubert corrected his mistakewithou t a word- of contradiction. The enormousadvantage which Schubert derived from the musicalatmosphere of his surroundings is evident. H ealways was sure to find an appreciative and, to some

extent, critical audience for his own works, whichincreased w ith every year in num ber and beau ty.The hearing of his own music offered at the sametime an opportunity for priming and shortening, ofwhich Schubert, however, availed himself not as m uch

as might be desired. M any important compositionsbelong to this period, amongst others, the beautiful,so called tragic symphony (which title, by the bye,seems a decided misnomer, the work being, on thecontrary, rather of a gentle and serene character).

I t was w ritten in 1816 for the 'Society of D ile ttant i, 'which had taken its rise from the original familyqu arte tt of the Schuberts, increased by thei rnumerous friends.

It was also about this time that Schubert received

the first subs tantial rew ard of his artistic labours. H ewas commissioned to write the cantata ofPrometheusfor a un ivers ity festival, and the honoraire wasfixed at the moderate sum of 100 florins inpaper



FRANZ SCHUBERT. 147

money,a figure which, taking into account the state

of the Austrian finances at that time, dwindlesalmost into nothingness. Nevertheless, he care-fully commemorates the fact in his di a ry :u To-dayfor the first time I composed for money."

"We also hear of a mass of Sch ub er t's being

played and sung under his own direction at theparish church of Lichtenta l, at which performancethe soprano part was taken by a young lady of thenam e of Theresa Grobe. She had a beautiful voice,and it is said that the interest which ourco mposer

took in her, was not of an exclusively artistic kind.How ever this may be, the affair led to no th ingmore tha n perhaps a fugitive romantic attachm ent.Theresa soon afterwards married a master baker, andth e practical wisdom of her choice is brough t to ind u-

bitab le evidence by the fact, th at a short time agoshe was still enjoying a blooming old age at V ienna.

Of infinitely greater importance, though muchsmaller in bu lk tha n the enum erated composi-tions, is a work, which more tha n any other has

proved the source of what little affluence and fameits author enjoyed du ring his lifetime. Tha t itspop ularity has not abated since then, the readerwill adm it, when I pronounce its name the ' E rlk ing.'

L 2



148 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

I should like to mention a few circumstances bearing

upon the horoscope of so important a creation.Spaun, one of Schubert's intimates at the t ime {i.e.

the end of 1815,) tells us, tha t the whole piece was

written in one afternoon. Schubert readthe versesonce or twice, and almost instantaneously conceived

and arranged his melod}'. When Spaun, who hadleft the room, re-ente red aftera short time, he foundhis friend noting down the music out of his head.

This enormous rapidity of Schubert 's productionis another characteristic of his talent. There is an

anecdote of a similar kind connected with anothersong of his. One Sunday he was sitting withseveral boon companions in a tave rn nea r "Vienna,called by the ominous name of the ' Beer Sack3.One of them had a book of poetry with him, and

Schubert, glancing throu gh its pages, suddenlyex-claimed: " I have a nice melody in my head, if I

could only get a piece of ruled paper." Somestaves were drawn on the back of a bill of fare, and

amidst the din of shouting guests, running waiters

and tinkling harps, the heavenly melody of the' Serenade' was conceived.

To return to the ' Erlking, ' it was as soon as

finished taken to the ' Stadtconvict ' and sung the



FRANZ SCHUBERT. 149

same evening to the pupils, first by the composer

himself and afterwards by one of his friends. Theyoung critics were rather taken abackby the drasticeffects of colouring in the composition, and particu-larly expressed their astonishment at the minorsecond occurringin the outcry of the terrified child,

till their music-master Euczizka explainedto themthe meaning and poetic necessity of the shrilldissonance.

This was perhaps the first, but not the only timethat our composer was taxed with eccentricity,

abstruseness, and wha tever elsethe favourite epithetsof superior Ph ilistinism may be. He shared in thisrespect the fate of every great master from Palestrinaand Bach, down to Schumann and Liszt, not ex-

cepting even the serene and simple geniusof Mozart.

The verdict of the public at the Pa ris Conservatoire,after hearing Beethoven's Seventh Symphony,de-

livered in exclamations of " II est fou " and the

like, may be considered as the representative ex-

pression of such narrow-minded malignity.

All this while Schubertwas teaching the lowestform of his father's school how to spell. We ask,

how his noble soul bore such fetters,in what kindof an att i tude our hero sat at this worse than



150 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

sp inn ing wheel ? Upon the whole very patiently.

Occasionally his grief may have vented itself inangry demonstrations uponthe backs of his pup i l s ;there even exists a vague rumour of his beingdismissed from h is d igni tyfor thrashing an obstinate,or I would rath er believe, a stupid boy with more

than usual energy. As a rule, however, the serenecalm of his mind remained undisturbed. "We

possess some fragments of his diary, relating to

this period, which express anything but a Pro-

metheus-bound-like feeling.* On one occasion he

speaks about a concert, at which he had been enjoy-ing himself, and addresses the genius of Mozart in

* The h istory of the narrow escape of these fragm ents frombeing destroyed,as told by the well-known Aloys Fucbs in

his ' Schubertiana,' is very curious, and deserves mentioning,as illustrative of the unaccountable neglect with whichour

composer's most precious relics were left to take care of

themselves. " Some years ago" Fuchs relates " I found at

the shop of an autograph dealer at Vienna the fragments of a

diary, written in Schubert's own hand, with several leaves

wanting. I questioned the proprietor about it, and thewretch confessed that,he bad given the missing sheets awaypiecemeal, partly to collectors of autographs, partly to

admirers of Schubert. After having expressed my opinionabout his vandalism. I took care to save what was left."



FRANZ SCHUBERT. 151

hyp erpathe tic term s. A nother time he gives a

sen timenta l description of his m eeting a friend inthe fields ; a further en try describes his visit to apictu re gallery, and concludes with the not overoriginal rem ark, tha t one ought to see p icturesoften in order to appreciate them properly.

Upon the w hole, the style and spirit of theseremarks strike one as rather below than above theaverage, and the same is the case w ith most of hisliterary utterances. Schubert, althoug h belongingthrough his creative w orks to the new phase of art,

was of a decidedly illiterate turn of mind, andnever made a serious effort in later life to fill upthe gaps of his early education.

I t was in the th ird year of his painful dru dg eryas a schoolmaster, th at a faint hope of possible

release seemed to dawn upon Schubert. The posi-tion of director of a musical establishm ent at L ay -bach became vacant, and although the yearly emolu-m ents of the place amounted to only five hundredflorins at th e outside, th is seemed to Schubert an

El Dorado compared with his actual circumstances.H is name appeared on the list of competitors, backedby a favourable testim onial from Salieri, and thewarm recommendations of the m unicipal au thorities.



152 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

But in vain. Fo rtune, unlikeherself, remained for

once unchangeable in her step-m otherly trea tm en tof this child of gen ius. Some one else was elected,and Schubert had to continue as a schoolmaster foranother year. A t the end of thi s te rm , friendshipagain stepped in and broke the hateful chains.

One Franz von Schober, a young poet, hadheard and admired some of Schubert's songs,and being told of the composer's narrow circum -stances, persuaded his mother, a rich lady, to takethe responsibility for the supp ly of Schubert's

modest wants. On these grounds, the latte r bu t tooreadily threw up his appointment and became adaily guest in Schober's house. H enceforth henever again bound himself by any fixed engagement.

I t is th is the second time in our short sketch

that we see a friend acting as Deus ex machindinSchubert's distresses, and it m ay seem appropriateto add here a few words about the num erous inte res t-ing men with whom his career became more or lessclosely connected.

"We first of all notice that only com parative lyfew of Schubert's friends were of his own calling.They mostly belonged to a class of general enthusi-asts, who in those halcyon days of political lethargy



FRANZ SCHUBERT. 153

w ere not uncomm only found in A ustria. A man of

this kind would broadly sympathise with all artisticasp irations, and so be able to receive the revela-tions of genius w ith a w illing heart. Unfortunatelyhe would also be apt to express his own vaguelong ings for th e ideal in more or less indifferent

ve rs e ; and it is in this latte r capacity that thestudent of Schubert's songs reluc tantly becomesacquainted w ith nam es like Schober, H iittenbren -ner, or Mayrhofer. The last mentioned seems tohave been on the most intimate terms with Schubert.

For two years they lived together in the same room.Two dramas and a number of songs owe theirexistence to this Bohemian friendship.

A s a rule , poet and composer, were at work to-ge the r at the same time, and as soon as M ayrhofer

had finished a sufficient num ber of verses, he handedthem over to Schubert'sdesk, who clad them in musicw ith a rapid ity , that sometimes made it difficult tokeep pace w ith him . The trag ic end of M ayrhofer,although happening long after our composer's death,throws a veil of sadness over this brig ht picture ofyouthful enthusiasm.

A hypochondriacal morbidness was from thebeginning a prom inent feature in the young poet's



154 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

character, and it seems to have grown with his

advancing age . Oncein a fit of melancholy despair,he tried to drown himself in the Danube . He was

however, drawn out of the water and restored to life,but not to the desire of living. He went on quietlyfor some time, till in 1836 he was suddenly taken

with a violent fear of cholera morbus, then ragingat Yienna. In order to escape the dreadful enemy,he made, by a strange but not unprecedented incon-sistency of human nature, a second, and this timesuccessful attempt at destroying himself.

Another, and upon the whole more useful classof friends, were singers bo th of the amateurand professional classes,who interpreted Schubert 'ssongs to Viennese circles, and in this way procuredhim what little fame and gain was allotted to him

in this earth ly exile. The most prominent amongstthese was Yogi, a popular singer at the ImperialOpera, whose name has been preserved from oblivionby his noble exertions in the service of genius. At

first there was some difficulty in drawing his atten-

tion to the productions of the obscure beginner,but

when once the ice was broken , Yogi ardently en listedin the task of securing a place to the rising staramongst the established constellations; and to this.



FRANZ SCHUBERT. 155

task he adhered to the end. I t was long after the

death of Schubert, that the then more than sexage-narian sang the i E r lk in g ' at a public concert.H e soon discerned the dream-like character ofSchubert's productiveness, and always used to quotean anecdote in illustration of the state of uncon-

sciousness, or as he called it,clairvoyance, in whichSchubert wrote his finest works. F ind ing a songof our composer's, which had been left at his rooms,too high for his voice, Vogl had it transposed, andafter a fortnight sang it in a lower key to Schubert,

who calmly remarked, " Eeally t h a t ' L ie d ' is not sobad ; whom is it by? " I t is also said th at Voglexerted a beneficial influence on his friend, inmaking him more careful in the choice of the wordsfor his songs.

"With the exception of Vogl, Schubert had butlittle connection with the musical celebrities of histim e. H e lived indeed a secluded life, in so far ashis own existence lay out of the musical atmosphereof his surroundings ; and from what we know of thecompounds of this atmosphere, we can quite under-stand why his uncombative, not to say indolentnature, shrunk from entering the arena of publiccontest.



156 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

Vienna, at that period, was divided into two

hostile camps, consistingof the respective disciplesof Weber and Rossini, or, as they preferred to callthemselves, the German and Ita lian schools of music.Apart from these, on a solitary height, stoodBeethoven, addressing his utterances more to

unbo rn generations than to ungrateful contem-poraries.

Schubert, although thoroughly imbued withthe

ideal seriousness of German art, was altogether of

too easy going a nature to take a decided position

in this struggle. He composed a couple of Italianovertures, in imitation of Eossini's brilliantverve,and was, on the other hand, perhaps slightly biassedagainst the German champion, by the arroganthauteur with which Weber is said to have treated

the young Yiennese composer's dramatic efforts.To Beethoven, Schubert always preservedthe at t i -tude of a worshipping disciple. Onceor twice he

tried to approach him personally, but Beethoven'sdeafness and growing misanthropy, preventedhim

from taking much noticeof an awkward youngman,with nothing particular to recommend him. It was

only on his death-bed tha t Beethoven recognisedthe

congenial flame in the works of the younger com-



FRANZ SCHUBERT. i$T

poser. Schindler tells us th at he gave th e dying

master, shor tly before h is end, some books of theju st published ' L iede r, ' to look throug h, and thatBeethoven expressed his admiring astonishment atthe flow of melody, and the richness of harmoniouscombinations, displayed in their narrow limits.

W h en last we left him , Schubert had jus t resolvedupon meeting the demands of life with his ownresources. B u t too soon he was to find out th eimpediments of such a bold undertaking; and seeingthat the hundred florins earned by his compositions

were no t likely to receive a new addition from thesame quarter, he saw himself compelled to undergoa new, though modified form of drudgery, that is,to give music lessons. Fo rtun ate ly he met at the be-ginn ing of his career w ith one of those families,

not uncommonly found amongst the Austriannob ility, which take a traditional pride in protectingartistic tale nt. The head of th is family, CountEsterhazy , took a grea t likin g for the young man,and engaged him perm anen tly in the instruction of

his young and beautiful wife, and his two daughters,aged thirte en and eleven respectively. D urin g thesumm er months Schubert often went w ith theEsterhazys to thei r coun try seat, at Zelesz, in



158 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

Hungary, where he became acquainted with those

wild, but wonderfully charming rhythmsand melo-dies of half gipsy, half M agyar origin, whichhe

afterwards embodied in his works. It is said thatthe beautiful motivein the opening of the ' Fantaisiea, l 'Hongroise,' was overheard by the composer at

the Count's castle, where a kitchen-maid used tohum it over her work.

We also have to record in connection with the

Esterhazy family a second tender attachment,the

most serious one to which our misogynist was ever

subject. At first, it is said, Schubert fell in lovewith afemme de chambre of the Countess, but soonthis ephemeral passion was consumed by the purerflame of an ideal love, w ith which the unfoldingcharms of his younger pup il, Caroline Esterhazy,

inspired him. The inexperienced girl scarcelyunderstood the silent devotion of the awkwardartis t. Only once it seems to have come to an

indirect utterance, when upon the Countess askinghim, why he had never dedicated any of his works

to her, Schubert exclaimed, in his usual abruptmanner : " W h a t ' s the use of that , everything be-

longs to you." In this resolution he persisted, and

the dedication to Countess Caroline, which standson



FRANZ SCHUBERT. 159

th e title page of the Fantasia, in F minor,Op. 103 was

added by the publisher after the composer's death.W it h the beg inning of Schube rt's career as an

independen t musician at V ienna, the biograph icalpart of our remarks has nearly reached its end.Henceforth his existence becomes so void of st irr ing

incidents of any kind , th at a continuous narrationwould appear tedious- Those of m y readers whomth e subject may interes t, I w ill refer for the mostaccurate details, to the excellent and comprehensivebook on Schubert, by D r. Kreiszle, to which is

affixed a catalogue of his works, with the num-ber and date of the ir publication. I, for my pa rt,must limit myself here to collecting and group-ing together such scraps of anecdotal intelligence, asmay enable the reader to discern th e outline of

Schubert's visible fates and features. Of his worksalso, I shall only mention those which show a moreimmediate bearing on the general conditions ofmusical development.

Schub ert's exterior, to begin w ith the least im-

portant point, was anything but prepossessing.H is features seemed to show some resemblancewith those of Beethoven, without however thatJove-like protrusion of forehead in the greater



160 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

master 's physiognomy, which might makeone

believe in the phrenologists' bump of ideality. Theworst feature of our composer's face was his nose," t ip- t i l ted"—to use the Laureate's ingenious way

of pu tting it— bu t, alas! anything but "s l ender. "W e also miss in him that sweet bent of mouth,

those " beautifully rhymed lips," as Heine callsthem, which we admire in the portraits of almostall the great lyrists of different ages and nations.The decided tendency towards growingfat, whichmanifested itself at an early period of life, gave an

additional touch of uncouth awkwardness to Schu-be rt's appearance, Contemporaries mentionthe

splendour and depth of his eye as a retrievingfeature, which of course cannot be recognisedin the

indifferent portraits we possess of him. Upon the

whole, we can easily understand tha t his appear-ance and social accomplishments did not qualifyhim to shine in the salons of the most refined aris-tocracy of Europe. Indeed, he shunned as muchas possible, and much more than was advantageous

to his worldly prospects, the circles in which aYiennesse reputation could onlybe established at

that time. He only felt comfortable in the midstof jolly companions, and at the genial board of



FRANZ SCHUBERT. 161

some Kneipe (tavern) where the gifts of Bacchus

and Gambrinus circulated freely, sometimes but toofreely for th e continued steadiness of brain s andlegs. Be it said here , once for a ll, th at Schubertwas never a confirmed drunkard, but occasionallyindulged in a glass too much.

In company of this kind he was quite at his ease,and often changed his habitual silence with fits ofboisterous mirth and jovia lity, from w hich how everhe soon relapsed into absent dreaming, often in-creased to a sta te of creative clairvoyance. To a

certa in gruffness of manner. Schubert owed the tit leof ' t y r a n t ' occasionally applied to him by hisfriends, who, neve rtheless, loved h im w ith all th esentimentality of South German you th. There areextant a number of letters exchanged between

him and his friends, du ring th e various trips intothe provinces, which he made at different times.In these we find displayed all the just-mentionedqualities, mixed w ith that especially Austrian sensefor cheap pu ns and harmless jocula rity to which I

hav e also called the reader's a ttention on morethan one occasion.

At other times, however, we see him give wayto a sense of depression but too commonly found

M



162 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

amongst those who produce works of art from the

depths of their own feelings, and the absence ofwhich would be unaccountable in the singer of the'W inte r-reis e. ' There were even for him intervalsof exhaustion, when the em ptiness of his ea rth lyexistence overshadowed his soul. I n one of his

letters addressed to his friend Kuppelwieser, at thebeginning of 1824, we find a sudden outcry of sad-ness, which strikes us by the pathe tic tru th , wem ight almost call it beau ty, of its expression." You are good and k ind ," Schubert says, " and

will forgive me for w hat others m ight tak e amiss,but the fact is, I'm the most miserable man inexistence. Fancy a man, whose health hasbeen irrecoverably lost, and who by his despairmakes it still worse instead of better ; fancy, I say,

a man, whose most brilliant hopes have cometo nothing, and to whom even the delights of friend-ship and love have proved a source of sufferanceand pain; nay, whose enthusiasm for the beautifulthreaten s to vanish, and then ask thyse lf if I am

not to be pitied.Meine Huh' ist hinMein lierz ist schwer,Ich finde sie ninimerUnd nimmermehr.



FRANZ SCHUBERT. 163

My peace is gone,*My heart is sore,I never shall find it,Ah ! never more !

So I might say every d ay ; for every nigh t when Igo to sleep, I wish never to wake again, and every1

m orning reminds me of ye ste rnig ht's sorrow."

In the further con tinuation of the letter, we aremade acquainted with some of the immediate causesof th is mournful disposition. " H is affairs," Schu-be rt says, speaking of a m utual friend, " and myown are in a bad condition, and we ne ither of ushave any money. Your bro ther's operaf has beendeclared unfit for the stage, and my music, ofcourse, has also become useless. Some Berlin com-poser has set Castelli's opera,The Conspirators,% tomusic, and it has been received with great applause.In this way I have composed two whole operas forno thin g." In Schubert 's diary we find an entry

* I quote from Mr. Bayard Taylor's excellent translation ofGoethe's ' Faust. '

f Merabras,the libretto of which was w ritten by JosephKuppelwieser.

X Identical with the 'Domestic Warfare'analysed by us.The original title, ' Tlie Conspirators,'had been thoughtobjectionable by the theatrical censor of Vienna, as beingxeferable to political matters.

M 2



164 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

of about the same date, which displays a sad

parallelism with the quoted letter. " My works ,"he writes there, " are the children of my intellectand sorrow, and those seem to delight the worldmost which my sadness alone has created."

This despondency was not the effect of consti tu-

tional melancholy or morbid affectation. We must,on the contrary, admire the courage and equanimitywith which Schubert bore up against the sea of

troubles, attacking him from all sides, with morethan usual vigour and obstinacy. It is t rue that

almost every one, who sots out on the thornful wayto the temple of fame has to suffer from the indiffer-ence with which the world looks upon a beginner.

The stern judges, who holdin one hand th e key of

the gate to immortality, while the other feels th e pulse

of the sovereign called public, seldom encouragetheyoung artist's first effort, or, to speak w ithou t meta-phor, publishers are naturally shy of launching the

ominous Op.1 of an unknown composer. But thisdoes not apply to Schubert. H is songs were largely

circulated in manuscript, and received with increas-ing applause in all the drawing-rooms of Vienna,and still no publisher could be persuaded to ventureupon the purchase of so popular a work as the ' Erl-



FRANZ SCHUBERT. 165

k in g .' I t had to be brought out at last at the

expense of the composer's friends. Even when theenormous profits reaped from the sale of his songsby Spina and other Vienna publishers had openedtheir eyes to some extent, Schubert had constantlyto hear ridiculous suggestions as to making his

accompaniments easier, and similar miserable de-vices from the tradesman's point of view.

At various periods of his life he attemptedto improve his precarious situation by findinga fixed appointment of some k ind, bu t always

in vain. Even the barren honour of being ac-cepted as a member of th e "Soc iety of F riends ofM u s ic " he coveted w ithout success. On the otherhand, it must be confessed that his own easy goingand, as far as his w orld ly affairs were concerned,

extremely lazy disposition prevented him from evertak ing fortune by the forelock. H is indifferenceto applause and money had become almost pro-verbial amongst his friends, who had constantly tobe on the alert, and use all possible means of persua-

sion in order to make him keep the most importantappointm ents. Once an advantageous situation asorganist at the Imperial chapel was offered to.Schubert by Count Dietrich stein, but refused by



166 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

him for unknow n reasons. Pe rhap s he had re -

signed himself to poverty by that time, and wouldnot accept a preferment which might interferewith, the h igher du ties of his artistic vocation.

One chief source of income for Viennese com-posers at that time was the public performance of

the ir works in w h a t w ere then called ' Academ ies,'that is, great concerts of instrumental and vocalmusic.

Pe rhaps some of my readers have hea rd of tha tmemorable ' A ca de m ie' in which Bee thoven's

Ninth Symphony was first produced in public, andexcited storms of applause. Being unable to hear,the deaf compos3r had to be turned round, so asto make him realise by the waving of ha ts andhandkerchiefs the effect of his work.

From this kind of public success Schubert wasto a great extent precluded by his bashfulness,and also by the fact that he played no instru m en tas a virtuoso. I t is said, tha t although he accom-panied his own songs on the piano most beauti-fully, he never acquired any rem arkab le technicalskill on that instru m ent. Only once he appearedin public as the conductor of a concert given by him-self. The scheme consisted exclusively of his own



FRANZ SCHUBERT. 167

"works, mostly vocal, and the success was brilliant

in all respec ts. I t was going to be repeated bythe composer, when his last illness intervened,and extinguished this faint glimmer of ephem eralgood fortune.

So li>ed Schubert, unknown, and scarcely pro-

tected against actual want, while others were reap-ing the fruits of his labour. B u t shall we the re-fore pity a man, who all t he while revelled in th etreasures of his creative ore, and from the verydepths of whose despair sprang the sweetestflowers of song ? W ho would not battle w iththe iciest blast of the north, if out of storm andsnow he could bring back to his chamber thegerms of the ' W inter-reise ? ' W ho would grudgethe moisture of his eyes if he could render itimmortal in the strains of S chubert's ' Lob derThrane ? '

W it h this we touch upon th a t side of his genius,upon which his claims to immortality must chieflyres t, I mean his power of embodying his ind i-vidual feelings in his art, as the result of whichpower we have to consider hissongs. But before Ican enter more fully into this most important partof Schube rt's works, I must ask the reader to



168 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

accompany me in a short analysis of the historical

growth of the song itself, and the peculiar positionit takes in both the poetical and musical branchesof emotional utterancein Germany. An investiga-tion of the purely literary side of the question willbe the more indispensable, as through it a new

undeniable proof of the inseparable connection ofmusic and poetry will be afforded. It may indeedbe affirmed that the high position, which the songtakes at the present day amongst the other formsof musical art, is quite as much owing to the great

modern lyrists of Germany, as to the composerswho by their works were inspired to commensu-rate efforts.

2.

Heinrich Heine, in his delightful preface to a

new German translation of ' Don Quixote, ' oc-

casionally remarks upon the comparative merits of

different national contributions to universal litera-ture, and after having awarded the first prize in

novel writing to the Spaniard Cervantes, and tha tin the drama to the Englishman Shakespeare,he

apostrophises his own countrymen in the following



FRANZ SCHUBERT. 169

mann e r : " And the Germans, what palm is due to

them?

Well , we are the best writers of songs inthe world. ~No people possesses such beautifulLieder as the Germans. Justat present the nationshave too much political businesson hand, but aftertha t has once been settled, we Germans, English-

men, Spaniards, Frenchmen,and Italians will all gointo the green forest and sing, and the nightingaleshall be umpire. I feel sure that in this contestthe song of "Wolfgang Goethe will gain the prize."In another place Heine predicts that posterity will

couple his own name w ith that of Goethe, asequally representative of German song, and the

present generation already seemsbut too willing to

acknowledge the younger poet's proud claimto thiscompanionship. But besides these two, a third

poet might be named of no lesser excellence,andworthy to complete the lyrical triad on the GermanParnassus, a poet of indisputable priority as to

time, and inferior to neither of his rivals in rangeand depth of feeling, although his work bears the

modest and half anonymous signature of ' ThePeople. ' It is indeed to the inexhaustible treasureof their popular songs, more thanto any other cause,tha t the Germans are indebted for the consciously



FRANZ SCHUBERT.

art istic achievements of their great lyrical

poets.There are two points which distinguish the

Volkslied from, and raise it in literary importanceabove, the popular utterances of all other nations .A s the first, I mention its wide range of topic,

which comprises almost all phases of domestic,religious, and political life, in their action on theunsophisticated and very often but too immediatelyconcerned mind of the toiling m ulti tud e. Onemight, in this respect, consider theVolksliedas a

continual commentary on historical events, inwhich the types of official saints and heroes fre-quen tly reappear in the quaintest distortions. But,side by side w ith the traces of drollery and satire,we find the expression of deepest sympathy, and

an intu itive understand ing for the grea t events ofhum an progress. Now here has the indignan tresistance of the free-born soul aga inst sp iritua lfetters resounded more powerfully than in Luther'shymn, EirC feste Burg (which, although, of known

origin, b} ' its elementary force and simplicity offeeling, seems to deserve the nam e ofthe GermanVolfolied,recently granted to it), and other songs of

the Reformation period.



FRANZ SCHUBERT. j 7 i

We also must not forget the irrepressible ten-

dency of the German soldier towards celebratinghis own and his commander's feats of valour inmore or less indifferent doggrel, to which we owemany valuable contributions, from the song of thelanzknecht who " w a s pr e sen t" (this assertion of

personal autopsy is typical) when they caught theFren ch K ing a t Pavia, down to the ballad of' Prince Eu gen e, the noble knig ht, ' and thestrongly diluted, but still somewhat racy, patrioticeffusions of the great Frederick's grenadier, by

father Gleim.* If to these we add theWanderlied.sung by the vagabond scholar and the journeyinghandicraftsman, and the drink ing-song, full of jolly"Walter Mapes-like bonhomie; we shall have nearlyexhausted the favourite subjects of the popular

song, as far as the y are attached to th e outwardoccurrences of human life.

B u t nowhere is the depth and tenderness of the

* I m ust remind the reader tha t theincognito of the authoris no t considered by me as an essential feature of the popularin opposition to the artistic song. The two criteria of the'Volkslied' are, firstly, its actual or past popularity, andsecondly, the real or apparen t absence of artistic purpose,founded either on genuine naivete or on the conscious effortof high poetic genius.



172 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

German nature displayed to greater advantage than

in the true domain of all lyrical poetry, the love -song. I t is unden iable th at these artless dittiescannot vie with the peculiar sweetness andverve ofthe French chanson or the sonorous grace of Tuscanrispettti and stornelli, any more than a lanzknecht

song could equal the weirdness of a Scotch b al lad ;bu t it is ju s t this tota l w an t of outw ard effect, andits exclusive reliance on the power of tru e feeling,which gives its principal charm to the Germansong, and at the same time makes it so em inently

represen tative of German national charac ter.I will not encumber the pages of thi s work w ith

an ever so slight sesthetical sketch of Germanpopular poetry. M ay I only be allowed to quote, asa specimen of the love-song w ith w hich we are he re

more immediately concerned, the following saddit ty . The reader must not ask me abou t itsautho r or its presumable date. I only know th at Iused to hum its melancholy tune, and was im-pressed by its half-understood symbolism, at an

age when all such antiquarian niceties seemed to beutte rly irrelevant, as irrelevant indeed as pe rhapsthey in reality are. Prin ted I saw it for the firsttime a few weeks ago, in Schure's charming 'H is to ire



FRANZ SCHUBERT. 175

du L ied .' M y translation reproduces the original

as closely as possible :

" Last night I have been dreamingA dream, so heavily,

In my garden there was growingA tree of rosemary.

* A churchyard was the garden,A grave the flower-bed,

And from the tree were droopingThe leaves and blossoms dead.

" The blossoms I did gatherIn a golden pitcher withal,

Till broken quite to piecesFrom my hands I saw it fall.

" Then saw I tears a-running,And drops as blood so red,

What can the dream be meaning—

Sweet true love, art thou dead?

"

The second characteristic feature of theVolksliedalluded to , stands in th e relation of both cause andeffect to th e richness and variety of its motives. I tis the continual contact and interchange of ideas be-tween the popu lar and the artistic song. Early tracesof thi s reciprocity we discover in w ha t has been calledthe first classical age of German poetry,i.e., thetim e of th e M innesingers. A lthough the social



174 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

position of these courtly poets widely severed them

from the ir hum bler breth ren of the fair and road-side inn, still they never disdained to imbue the irfantasy with the ever fresh naivete* of popularfeeling. The most cha rming song of W al te r vonder Vogelweide, and perhaps one of the sweetest

blossoms of erotic poetry, generally called from itssuggestive burden ' T an d ar adei ' is w ritten in thestyle of what has been nam ed ignom iniously " th elower love ," bu t what, in reality , is only the un-disguised rendering of preartistic sentiment.

It was thus that the Minnesinger repaid with theadditional interest of his genius and refinement,the suggestion he owed to the treasure of the people'sfeeling, very different in th is respect from theaccomplished poet of the Langues d'Oc and d'Oil.

Both Troubadours and Trouveres borrowed someof the ir most charming forms, like the Alba,Serenade, and Pastorelle, from rustic song, butunde r thei r hands these simple blossoms of thefield were forced into an artificial bloom, of great

beauty and splendour, but entirely unavailable forthe less refined taste of the m ultitude . The deepchasm opened in this way between Minstrelsand

Troubadours, natural and refined singers, could not



FRANZ SCHUBERT. 175

bu t prove fatal to the creations of bo th. Courtly

poetry, deprived of the ever new pulsation of un -alloyed feeling, soon degenerated into a mere wor-ship of abstract form, th e petrified specimens ofwhich we still admire in the stately and sonorous,but too often almost meaningless , stanzas of A rnau t

Daniel and Folco of M arseilles. The popularmuse, on the other hand, left without the guidanceand example of he r more refined sister, relapsedinto grossness, and for a long tim e lost even theorgan of exalted speech in the unintelligible stam-

mering of a low patois.In Germany, also, the prime of artistic song,

as represented in names like W al ter von derVogelweide and M th a rt von Beucnthal, was notof long duration. D ur ing the fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries, poetry passed from the handsof a decaying nobility into those of the risingbourgeoisie, and was treated by the w orthy"m as te r s in ge rs" very much l ike another handi-craft. A code of rules, under the name ofTabulatur,

was established, and his increasing proficiency inha nd ling the traditional forms raised the aspiringsinger through the different stages of apprenticeshipto th e dignity of a m aster and jud ge . The frequent



176 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

glimpses of real poetic feeling, visible throughthe

sluggish stream of Philistinism, form the redeemingfeatures in this picture.

But even these were wanting, when MartinOpitz, during the troubles of the war of th i r tyyears, again raised the banner of German poetry,

and ushered in the period of second-hand rococowhich, in trying to reproduce the dignified gracesof the French muse, ultim ately tended to exposethe hollow affectation of her pseudo-classicism in a

Teutonic undress.

In the meanwhile the Volkslied went its own w ay,all but unnoticed by the literati of the day, but

preserved from the influences of lassitude and

commonplace vu lga rity bythe mighty events which,from time to time, stirring up the passions of the

nation, roused the popular muse to correspondingefforts. I have mentioned before the assistancelent by the poetry of the people to the reformatorymovement of the sixteenth century, and I will add

here, that in the many beautiful choral melodiesused at the present time in the Protestant service,popular tunes of great antiquity, and originallyintended for a very different purpose, may be

recognised.



FRANZ SCHUBERT. 177

It remains to be acknowledged, that a feeling for

the charms of the pure source of unalloyed impulsewas, even during the most artificial times, neverqu ite lost amongst German poets. The beautifulsongs of Simon Dach and Paul Flemming, conceivedin the pures t strain of popular simplicity, in th&

midst of the hubbub of both Silesian schools, strikeone like the sweet wood-note of a wild bird amonga flock of screaming peacocks.

The same consciousness of the great value forpoetry of a popular origin, w as shown at a later

period and in a manner characteristic tohimself,by the man who, more than any other, may layclaim to the dignity of a liberator of the muse fromconventional fetters. I am referring to a lette rfrom Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, to his friend

Nicolai, dated 20 th September, 1777 . The latter,a publisher, and at the same time a prolificau thor , of Berlin, belonged to a school of superficialVoltairians who, extending their scepticism beyondthe limits of religious inquiry, were apt to consider

as barbarous, whatever did not fit into the systemof the ir dry N orth-G erm an rationalism. N ot un -like certain contemporary legislators, Mcolai wasjprone to place all the evils of this wicked world to

if



178 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

the account of the Society of Jesus, and to this

idiosyncrasy, combined with a clumsy attack onGoethe's ' Werthe r, ' he owes his place in ' F a u s t 'as " Proktophantasmist ," who even on MountBrocken " scents the Jesu i t s . " In the revivedinterest for popular poetry w hich, owingto Herder 's

meritorious researches, beganat that t ime to spreadin Germany, he, of course, discovered only a

morbid craving for the dark middle ages, and,

in order to ridicule the whole movement, proposedto publish a collection of the silliest possible speci-

mens of old songs, for which he also solicitedLessing's contributions. But here he was to be

sorely disappointed. Lessing , in his answer,strongly insists upon the merits of a true songof the people, as distinguished on the one side

from the vulgar utterance of the rabble, and on

the other from the inane productions of " scholarlyrhym esters of the fou rteenth and fifteenth cen turies."A s a model of genuine power, he quotes a broom-maker's song, heard by himself in his childhoodfrom a member of the profession. In order to

give the English reader an opportunity of forminghis own opinion on a poem, so much extolled by the

great critic, I will here insert a translation of the



FRANZ SCHUBERT. j 7 9

few lines in question, in which unfortunately th e

racy flavour of the German word " saufen " could,for w an t of an En glish equivalent, be rendered butimperfectly. I t runs thu s :—

" If I've no tin to get a drop,I go and tie some besoms up,

And go the alleys down and up,And hollo: ' Buy my besoms up,'To get me tin to get a drop."

The zeal of Herder in discovering the hiddentreasures of ancient folk-lore, roused chiefly by the

previous similar attem pts of Bishop Perc y in thiscountry, was, of course, not to be damped byNicolai's dry scoff. As the final result of hisresearches, he published specimens of popular songamongst all nations , under the title of the ' Voices

of Nations in Songs,' and from the appearance ofthis work, we may date, to some extent, the rise ofa new epoch in poetry. The importance of thebook lies perhaps less in the collected material,which, according to the scanty philological resources

of the time, leaves much to be desired, as in thegreat interest, w ith which the young and susceptiblesoul of Goethe received the new revelation. Mostof my readers will know Goethe's masterly poem

N 2



180 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

of the < Complaint of the noble W ife of Asan-Aga , '

which was smuggled into the volumeas a translationfrom the original ' Morlackisch.'

But the impulse once received was soon to leadto higher efforts. H erd er 's idea chimedin too wellwith the general disposition of the t ime, and the

young poet's individual bias,not to be conduciveto deeds of greater valour than a clever imitation.For this was the period of "s to rm and s t r e s s " in

German literature. The cause of the natural v. the

artificial, of Shakespeare aga inst Fre nch classicism

had been pleaded by the mighty voice of Less ing ;and Goethe's own early productions in the dramaand novel show distinctly enough , whichway his

genius tended. "Whatwas more natural, than thatnow, when the wide unknown regions of popular

feeling were discovered to him, when the lyricalgiant touched his congenial mother-soil, his powerof song grew irresistible? In this way anotherstronghold of antiquated prejudice was broken,and a new domain thrown open to the longing of the

human heart for impulsive utterance.I have tried hitherto to sketch the line of pro-

gress, which ultimately led to the re-union of

popular and artistic song by the greatest poetic



FRANZ SCHUBERT. 181

genius of modern times. Henceforth the task

would devolve upon me, to follow the new formofart on its further course th roug h the bright but

passing glow of the romantic school, to its secondclimax of development, when, under the handsofHeine and his followers, it was to become the

exponent of intensest passion and deepest suffering.Many stars of song mightbe named, like Brentano,Eichendorff, and Lenau , each br ight and powerfulin its individual sphere. But as I must fear thatto the greater number of English readers these

names are, and would have to remain, names only,I will limit myself to tracing a few generalfeatures, adhering essentially to the nature of

German artistic song.

As far as its metrical structure is concerned, the

song of Goethe and Heine displaysbut little differ-ence from its popular source. Take, for instance,the following well-known stanza from oneof the

songs in Wilhelm Meis ter :—

" Who never ate with tears his bread,

Who never passed the night's long hoursSleepless and weepingon his bed—

He knows you not, ye heavenly powers,"

and compare it with the above-quoted popular love-



182 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

poem. The increase of every line by • one iambic

foot is, of course, quite accidental, and the onlyadditional piece of workmanship consists in the

introduction of rhyme into the first and third linesof every verse. But even this is not by any meansa necessary requirementof artistic song. The only

way, in which the poet could show his formalmastery, and in which indeed it has been shownby

representative men, consistsin those slight rhythm-ical nuances) mostly of an onomatopoetic kind,achievable onlyby the hand of genius, and scarcely

perceptible to the mult i tude.This absence of all artificial effect contains at

once a great danger and a still greater advantagewith regard to the course of German li terature, as

distinguished from that of other nations. Let us,

for instance, throw a comparing side glance on two

of the great English lyrists of the beginning of the

present cen tury . Both Shelley and Keats wereprone to grapple with the great problems of

humanity, and the only style in which such exaltedsubjects could be treated, naturally tended moretowards the Pindaric ode than the simple stanza of

the popular song. Hence the wonderful beautyand variety in the structure of their strophes and



FRANZ SCHUBERT. 183

th e elevation of their language ; hence also the

hig h standard of modern poetic language in thiscoun try w hich ought to deter the young bardfrom entering the lists unprepared, or which,at least, makes it easy to distinguish the masterfrom th e incompetent b lu ndere r; the danger only

being, that undue importance may be gained bysound over sense, by mechanical skill over naturalimpulse.

Such a danger need certainly not be apprehendedin Germany, where the easy flow of theVolkslied

stanza gave and gives a bu t too welcome oppor-tu n ity to the feeling youth , for p roviding hiscommonplace amorousness with the additionalcharm of tolerable verse. But, on the other hand,th e simplicity in metre and diction, implied by

the popular origin of German artistic song, gavefull libe rty to its masters, in concentrating thepower of their genius on the unfettered expressionof their impulsive thoughts, expanding, in this way,the flower-like nature of the Volkslied into a creation

of highest artistic consciousness.La st, bu t not least, I mention the great advan-

tages, which the conciseness of German lyricsoffered to the melodies of the composer, and this



184 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

brin gs us back to the musical consideration of ou r

them e. "We will here also begin w ith a brief su r-vey of the historical material.

Our rem arks about the melodies of pop ular songsin Germ any will be few and short. A classificationof individual tunes would, in most cases, prove all

but impossible, since the character of their modula-tions has undergone the influence of consecutiveages ; a guess from th e know n or definable da te ofwords as to the equal age of their musical accom-paniments would also, in many cases, be open to

serious objections, seeing that one and the sametu ne has often been used for different poems atdifferent times. Num erous secular tun es have, aswe mentioned before, been adopted by both the oldand new churches for their purposes, and to these

we shall have to recur on a late r occasion. A s tothe general character of the German popular tune,especially in the love-song, it may be said tha t,together with high beauties of melodious expres-siveness, it displays grea t sim plicity, and oftenmonotony, of rhythmical progress, which, combinedwith the frequently occurring minor keys, is, onthe whole, admirably adapted to express the melan-choly tone of most of the poems. A s to t h e



FRANZ SCHUBERT. 185

musical form of the Vblkslied,I must ask the reader

to remem ber tha t a strictly strophic treatm ent iswith few, if any, exceptions adhered to, the melodyof th e first stanza being , w ithout changes of im-portance, repeated in all the following ones.

Between this and the variegated musical treat-

m ent of the artistic German song there is a widechasm, and, in trying to overbridge it, music itselfoffers us bu t little assistance. The on ly imm ediateinfluence of the popular e lement on the works ofSchubert, the first and chief representative of

modern song, must be referred to the Sclavonicrather than to his own nationality, and is chieflydiscernible in his instrumental compositions.

I t is true that the great masters of the lastcentury repeatedly tried their power in the domain

of song, bu t thei r efforts never proved of longvitality, partly because the poems of contemporarywriters contained but little of an inspiring nature,par tly , also, because these composers did not fullycomprehend the nature of this particular form of

art . M ozart, for instance, introduced into hissetting of G oethe's 'V io le t ' a distinct recitative,which, although charming in itself, cannot butappea r ou t of place in these surroundings. Almost.



186 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

the same might, in a modified way, be applied to

Beethoven himself; for, although he fully under-stood the bearing of Goethe's lyrical efforts on the

'sister art, and, indeed, has anticipated in his

settings of the great poet's words,all the essentialvarieties of treatment, as applied in the artistic

song of the present time, still it must be said thatthe condensed, almost epigram matic, modeof ex-

pression required in the song, always proved a

fetter to his grandly dramatic pathos.

But, nevertheless, it was Beethoven who, by

urging in his great instrumental works,and par-

ticularly in the Ninth Symphony, the demand of a

poetical basis of music, reacted inspiring ly on his

disciple Schubert, and through him on the pro-

gressive development of song. I, of course, do not

mean to imply tha t Sch ube rt 's lyrical works wereoriginated, or even influenced, by Beethoven's lastSymphony, which many of them preceded in t ime.B ut it seems that in the mysterious system of re-

ciprocating forces, called economy of nature, the

energy of dramatic expression was entirely ab-

sorbed by the greatest of modern masters, and the

only step in advance which could be made at the

time lay in the sphere of subjective passion. To



FRANZ SCHUBERT. 187

supply this demand, the lyrical genius of Franz

Schubert was fashioned and formed by nature'sown hand, and it is to the happy coincidence of hisbirth being almost simultaneous with theliteraryrevival of the Volkslied, that the artistic song owesits high position amongst the other forms of

modern art, and at the same time m arks an im-portant step towards the ultimate amalgamation ofpoetry and music.

In the artis tic song so created, we have to con-sider three different forms of equal importance, all

of them known to, and used with success by,Schubert .

The first and simplest of them we will call th e" strophic song ," because in imitation of theVolks-lied, it repeats throughout the unchanged melody

of the first stanza. As a charming specimen ofthis kind I quote Schubert's setting of Goethe's1 Haideros iein,' t he tender grace of which isinimitably rendered by the melody.

"Very different from this is what th e Germ ans

call by the untran slatable b ut easily compre-hensible t itle of ' Durchcom ponirtes (literally,throughcomposed) Lied,' in which the melodyfollows as closely as possible the different feelings



188 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

expressed by the words, and therefore has to-

change with the varied sentiments of the singlestanzas, artistic un ity being preserved eithe rby a

recurring motive in the accompaniment, or by the

return of the first melody at the end of the song.Schuber t ' s 'L indenbaum' may be considered as

representative of this phase in lyrical music.A still more progressive tendencyis shown in

what we will term the " declamatory song." In

this we closely approach the border-line of the

" m u s i c of the future," one important principle of

which becomes distinctly recognisable. The vocalpart is here changed into a kind of emphasisedenunciation, while the accompaniment, raised to a

hitherto unknown expressiveness, lets us divinethe undercurrent of emotional pathos. On ly

where the lyrical feeling rises to a climax of in-tensity, the voice breaks out into a stream of

melodious beauty, made doub ly impressiveby the

poetic demand, which it is destined to supply. As

a masterpiece of this kind, and as one of the finest

songs ever produced, we mention Schubert 's ' DieStadt, ' with its marvellous pianoforte bye-play,suggestive of the winds of heaven and the sighs of

love forlorn. It is by songs of this order that



FRANZ SCHUBERT. 189

Schubert has deserved the name of " le musicien le

plus poetique," attributed to him by Liszt, a namewhich, at the same time, expresses most empha-tically his claim to a place amongst the greatestmasters of his art.

Schubert died young, " rich in wha t he gave,

richer in what he promised," as the inscription onhi s tombstone has it. Tha t the height of hiscreative power was not surpassed, perhaps notreached by him at his dea th, is shown by the factthat the finest specimens of his lyrical muse are

in a posthumous collection of his songs.The words of nearly half the songs in Schubert's

' Schw anengesang' are by H e in e ; and one caneasily distinguish how the lyrical intensity of thatgrea t poet touched the deepest strin g in the com-

poser's congenial na tu re . I t is difficult to saywhat might have been the consequences, if therising fame of the young Khenish poet had reachedth e distant A us trian capital sooner. As it was,Schubert saw the ' Bu ch der L ie d e r' not long

before his dea th, bu t ju st in time to open the v istaof a new phase in the development of lyrical music.For it was unde r th e influence of Hein e's con-densed lyrical patho s, tha t Schubert abandoned



FRANZ SCHUBERT. 191

be typhus fever, the patient was busy with plans for

new compositions, amongst which an opera calledThe Count of Gleichen greatly occupied his thoughts.I n the meanwhile his illness made rapid progress.On the 18 th of Novem ber he called his brother to hisbedside and sa id : " Fe rdinand , put your ear close

to my m ou th ," adding in a mysterious w hisper :" What is going to happen to me? " H is brothertried to calm him with hopes of a speedy recovery,but the patient got more and more excited, andrepeatedly tried to rise from his bed, believing

himself to be in a strange room. W hen thephysician arrived a few hours afterwards and tried tocomfort him , Schubert leant his han d against thewall and said in a slow vo ice : " He re , here is an endof m e." These were the last words he u tte re d ;

he died at th ree o'clock in th e afternoon ofNovem ber 19th, 1828. H e was buried in thecemetery of Wahring, close to where Beethovenlies, altho ug h he died in a different parish . Th isarrangement was made, owing to an incident of

Schubert's last illness, which we give in the wordsof his brothe r. Two days after our composer'sdeath, Fe rdinand w rites to his fath er: " Dear andhonoured father, many people have expressed a wish



192 FRANZ SCHUBERT.

to see our dear Fran z bu ried in the "W ahring ceme-

tery, and I agree with them, believing this to havebeen his own desire. On the evening before hisdeath he said to me in a state of half consciousness:4 1 implore you to take me to m y room, and no tto let me lie in this corner un der the e arth . D ont

I deserve a place overground ? ' I answered him :'Dear Franz, calm yourself. Believe in you rbrother Ferdinand, in whom you have always ha dconfidence, and who is so fond of vou. Y ou are inyou r own room, where you have always been, and

are lying in your own bed .' Then Franz saidag ain : ' No, tha t cannot be t r u e ; Beethoven isnot lying here.' Is not th is a sign of his mostardent wish, to be placed near Beethoven, whom headmired so much? "

However th is may be, we gladly recognise thesignificance of the fact of Schubert's resting afterdea th near th e master, who in life had been theguiding star of his aspirations.



CHAPTER III.

EOBEET SCHUMANN.

1.

ROBERT SCHUMANN'S place in the history of hisar t, is generally described as that of the leader ofthe romantic school of music. This name, whe therwell or ill-chosen, indicates at any rate the relationsbetween his music and the corresponding movement

in Germ an litera ture , known by the same appellation,and it was on these grounds eagerly adopted bySchumann himself. Indeed the whole character ofhis early efforts is, to a certain extent, explicableonly from a literary point of view, and it is also on

this close connection with poetical aspirations, thatSchumann m ust res t his claim to the name of (tospeak figuratively) the St. John of that important



i 9 4 ROBERT SCHUMANN.

phase of artistic progress which we have called

' 'poetic music," and as the paraclete of which werecognised the gigantic geniusof Richard "Wagner.I t is true that the works of Schumann's riper yearsdisavow (as he did himself by word of- m ou th) w ha the then called his youthful eccentricities,and tend

to show that his breach with the established form infavour of poetical impulse, had never beenof a veryserious kind. Still the factof his original tendencytowards what he himself called" the poetry of a r t "remains unshaken, and is morever attested by his

own philosophical writings on the sourcesand con-ditions of musical inspiration. It is herefore in

the twofold capacity as a composer and as a literaryman that we shall have to consider Schumannin

the following pages. B ut first of all we must enter

upon a short survey of his youthful doings andlongings.

Robert Schumann was born at Zwickau, a smalltown in the kingdom of Saxony, in 1810, the

youngest of five children. His father was the

founder and head of a publishing firm of someimportance, still existing j at the same time he was

a man of considerable taste in literature and art,and himself the author of various works on com-



ROBERT SCHUMANN. 195

mercial and other subjects. Milton and Young

were his favourite authors, but he equally appre-ciated the merits of more modern English poets.To a translation of Byron's works, published by hisfirm, he himself contributed ' Childe H aro ld ' and'Beppo.' I t is generally supposed that poets and

artists inherit their talents and inclinations chieflyfrom their mothers. W ith our composer the reverseseems to have been the case. While the elderSchumann was decidedly a man of talent in hissmall way, his wife was of a more practical turn of

mind, and eventually showed an almost eccentricaversion against her son's choosing the career of amusician.

About Schumann's early youth there is little tobe said. He was considered a kind-hearted, genial

boy, with a fair but not astonishing amount oftalents; very fond of playing pretty tunes on thepiano, but very little inclined to practise in amethodical way, or to trouble his head aboutharmony and counterpoint. Nevertheless he began

composing little melodies at a very early age, andit is also said that he possessed the talent of mimick-ing certain peculiarities ofhis friends by particularly.striking combinations ofsounds; a gift which earned

o 2



ROBERT SCHUMANN.

for him great admiration, and indeed opens a prospect

to the grea t achievements of a later period. A t th esame time he used to try his hand at poetry.Romantic dramas, full of horrors and highwaymen,of his own composition, were performed by Schu-mann and his friends on an improvised stage, the

father looking on all the while and carefully watch-ing the dark and as yet undecided aspirations ofhis favourite son. If the elder Schumann had lived,the career of our composer would probably havetaken a very different tu rn , and m any troubles

might have been saved him . I t seems that at avery early stage of his son's development, fatherSchumann recognised, or at least suspected, thegreat genius struggling in Robert, and actuallyasked C. M. von W eber to u nd ertak e the musical

education of the young student. Unfortuna telythis proposal came for unknown reasons to nothing,and our composer continued at Zwickau in a fairway of becoming a local celebrity, bu t w ith verylittle advantage for his artistic progress. Soon

afterwards his father died, and when, at Schumann'sschool education being finished, the choice of aprofession came in question, his widowed mother




opposed an obstinate veto against her son's entering

the career of a virtuoso.We have now to accompany Schumann to the

old university town of Leipsic, where he was in-

scribed in the books of the Alma Mater as a wor-

shipper of Themis, whilein reality his heart remained

unchangeably attached to the muse. We possess aletter of the young law-student malgre ltd, writtensoon after his arrival at Leipsic, to a friend withwhom he had been travelling in South Germany,previous to his definite settlement at the university.

This document is interesting in many respects, asgiving a striking view of his wild oats, which,by the way, were sown at that time by most youngmen of genius, in the same almost typical manner.This was the period of Friedrich Kichter's greatest

glory, the halo round the poet's features being stillintensified by his recent death. The readers of{Sartor Eesartus ' will understand whatin Germanyis called 'Jean Paulism,' and not be surprised at

some hypersentimental eccentricitiesin the following

extracts. In Schumann's case, the disease took theform of a strong tendency towards falling in love in

.a general way, the then following despair being;



198 ROBERT SCHUMANN.

flavoured with the additional troubles of a chronic

lack of cash.But now for the letter. It is dated the fifth of

June, 1828, and runs thus : " My dearest Eosen,—To-day is the nineteen th of Ju ne, unfo rtunatelyit has

taken all this time to continue my letter. Oh! to

be with you at Heidelberg. Leipsic is an infamoushole, where one can't enjoy one's life a bit; my

money makes rapid progress, much moreso than I

do at the lecture hall, a remark which is both wiseand taken from life, nay, which is more, from my

own life." (Thus far the freshman has been pre-valent, but now Jean Paul appears in the back-ground.) "Here I sit, without money, and com-

paring in silence the present with the hours justgone, which I passed with you so delightfully.

Musing I stand before your image, and before thewhimsical fate which leadsmen to meet each otherfrom the most distant quarters of the world, only to

unite and separate them again. You perhaps are nowsitting on the ruins of the old castle, smiling and

looking with a joyful heart on the blossoms of June ,while I stand on the ruins of my own airy castlesand

dreams, weeping and looking up to the dark sky of




th e presen t and future. However, this letter seems

about to grow dreadfully serious, but that it shallnot, by God ! Melancholy faces like yours must becheered up, and my dreary earnest I will keep to

myself. M y journey from Eegensb urg was devilishtiresome, and I missed you very much in that arch-

catholic country. I am not fond of giving descriptionsof journeys, least of all such as remind you of un-pleasant feelings. Mayit suffice to say that Ithoughtof you most affectionately, and tha t the image of

the lovely Clara* stood before my eyes in waking

and sleeping."In this way the letter goes on, touching spas-

modically upon friendship, Clara, money,or ratherno money m atters, and other heterogeneous subjects.I quote only one more passage : " At Bayreuth,

I paid a visit to the widow of Jean Paul, who pre-sented me with his portrait. I was introduced

* Not to be mistaken for that other " Clara," who wastobecome the faithful and congenial companion of Schumann.The lady here in question was a Miss Kurrer, whose acquaint-ance he made, when she was already engaged to be married,which, however, did not prevent him from admiring hermost fervently. The friendly acquiescence of the reallover shows clearly the innocently romantic characterof thewhole affair.



zoo ROBER'l SCHUMANN.

thro ug h the kindness of old M rs. Kollwenzel.* If

the whole world read Jean Paul it would certainlybe better, bu t also more unhapp y. H e has oftenbrought me to the verge of madness, but the rain-bow of peace always flows softly over the tears, andthe heart grows wonderfully elevated and trans -

formed. . . . Farew ell, and be hap py . M aythe genius of mankind be w ith thee , and that ofjoyful tears accompany thee for ever."

This short utterance must suffice us as a speci-men of the general condition of Schum ann's

mind during his first sojourn at Le ipsic. H is wayof life seems to have been of an isolated kind, atleast as far as h is fellow-students were concerned.The uncouth, mock enthusiasm of the so-called oldTeutonic patriots, then in vogue at most of

the German universities, could not bu t have am arr ing , inharmonious effect on the tender stringsof his heart. As to his professional stud ies,there was a total absence of even an attemptedbeg inning . A long time after his matriculation at

the university, he writes to the above-mentioned

* The keeper of an inn near Bayreu th, which had becomecelebrated by several of Eichter's works being writtenthere.




friend : " I have not been to a single lecture, bu t

have worked a good deal quietly, i.e. I have playedthe piano and written some Jean Pauliads."

As the most important event, both for his lifeand artistic career, we have now to consider theacquaintance with Friedrich "Wieck and his

daughter Clara, wh ich Schumann made about thistime. H e took at once a grea t interest in thetalen ted g irl, who at the age of nine alreadygrappled successfully with the technical difficultiesof her instrum ent. Clara W ieck was a pupil of her

father's, and of him now Schumann also took somepianoforte lessons, the first regular instructionhe had had . In this favourable atmosphere hisresolution of giv ing himself wholly to ar t grewmore and more decided. In the meantime, how-

ever, the prejudices of his mother had to beconsidered, at least outwardly , and in order tosatisfy her, Schumann left Leipsic for Heidelberg,where at that time the great legal authority Thibautattracted a grea t many students. Unfortunately,

or fortunately, the same professor took a most livelyinte res t in music (witness his book about the' Purity of Musical Art'), and the reader will easilyguess which part of his master's knowledge had the




of considerable range and origin ality . "We also hear

of a quarrel at a coffee-house, in which Schumannbehaved with great tact and spirit. The affairmight have been of serious consequences, if his

adversary had not ultimately discovered himselfas

a commercial gentleman of Hebrew descent, who

was but too happy to drop his chivalrous grandilo-quence, as soon as matters began to look serious. A

beautiful English lady, to whom Schumann losthis

heart at first sight, and who, pa rting from him at

Venice, presented him sentimentally with a branch

of cypress, may form the final tableau of this happytime of youthful freedom and enthusiasm.

On returning to Heidelberg, he had at onceto face again the flood of troublesome realities.Firs t of all a number of importunate creditorshad

to be quieted, and it was no easy task to make aconscientious guardian doleout a further allowanceto his extravagant ward. The usual time for uni-

versity studies had also nearly elapsed, and a legalexamination was threatening, which Schumann felt

himself wholly incapableof going through. At lasthe had to rally his spirits, and make a full confes-sion of his doings to his mother. The letter in

which this was done is still extant, and deserves a



2O4 ROBERT SCHUMANN.

short notice on our part, as strongly indicative of

our hero's characteristic shyness of utterance,which in this case was still increased by the tenderconsideration for his mother's well-known feelings,and which could be got over onlyby the firm per-

suasion, that the gain or loss of all his ideal goods

was at stake.At first he does not like to broach the subject:

" Good morning, mamma," he slyly begins ;" howshall I describe to you the bliss of th is mom ent ?The flame of spirits of wine is flickering and tossing

against my coffee-machine, and the skyis pure andgolden—one would like to kiss it. The wholespirit of the morning penetrates me fresh and sober.In addition, your letter is lying before me, in whicha whole treasury of sentiment, wisdom, and virtue

is discovered. My cigar is also excellent—in short,the world is sometimes very beautiful, i.e. man, if

he would only rise early every morning ." B u t thismatutinal effusion is soon changed for a differenttone. He begins to describe, in a most impressive

manner, the struggle pervading his whole lifebetween poetry and prose," or will you call it jus

and music ;" he enters into, and tries to dispel, all

his mother's prejudices against music as a profession,




while on the other hand he po ints out the drawbacks

of a legal career for a commoner, w ithout greatpro perty or connections, and w ithou t real interestin law yers' " miserable penny squabb les." A t lastFriedrich "Wieck is referred to as the best judge ofhis (Schum ann 's) m usical talent, and to the decision

of this umpire he promises to submit the final choiceof a vocation.

The immediate result of this letter was anotherone from Mrs. Schumann to old Wieck, full ofdoubtful spelling and words underlined four or five

times, in which the frightened mother implores themaster not to be biassed by his own love of musicto decide in accordance w ith Eobe rt's wishes. Thisapplication, however, proved of no avail. W ieckhad distinctly recognised the spark of genius in his

pupil, and his decision was given accordingly. Soonafterwards Schumann returned to Leipsic, in orderto complete his preparatory technical studies beforeappearing in public as a pianist.

The second and th ird decades of the present

century were the halcyon days of the executivemusician. Glory and riches poured down in analmost inexhaus tible stream on the head of th efortunate virtuoso.



2o6 ROBERT SCHUMANN.

In reading of the enormous sums gained by

Paganini, or of the ladies dividing the atomicremains of a cusliion on which Franz Liszt had beensitting, one does not quite understand the anxietyof Mrs. Schumann in preventing her son fromtaking his share of this golden harvest, which his

eminent talent seemed to secure him beyonddoubt. About the ideal danger threatening his

artistic individuality, and with it the progress of

modern music, we may safely say shedid not troubleherself. Whether her son would have been strong

enough to withstand the alluring siren of ephemeralsuccess, and follow the distant call of the true muse,is a difficult question to answer.

Luckily an accident, or shall we call it artisticProvidence, saved him the trouble, with which a

decision in favour of virtuous hardship against easyvice is only to be bought. In his eagerness to gaina perfectly even and independent action of eachsingle finger on the piano, Schumann had inventeda complicated machinery, by means of which, it

seems, the third finger of his right hand was sus-

pended, while the four others went through the

most difficult evolutions. The consequence was

that, after a little while, the sinew of the th i rd




finger was by unna tural extension weakened to such

a degree, th at it became all but disabled, and ofcourse entirely unavailable for artistic purposes.This implied practically the loss of the whole righthand, and every tho ug ht of a career as an executiveartist had forthwith to be relinquished. The piano-

forte had lost one of its ablest representatives, butthe gain of music as a whole was incommensurablygreater.

2 .

The first favourable result of Schumann's changedprospects, was the serious commencement of theore ti-cal studies, against which he had felt till then a strongaversion. The influence which the late attainm ent

of this fundamental part of music had on hiscompositions we shall have to consider before long.B u t first we must now tu rn to an event which forthe following years was to lead the whole power ofhis mind into a different channel. This is th e

starting of a new musical journal, which, under thetitle Neue Zeitschrift filr Musik,was soon to becometh e intellectual centre and mouthpiece of a newphase in the art of sound.




The circumstances under which this rem arkable

birth took place are described by the father, or tospeak more accurately, one of the fathers, that is

our composer, in the fo l lowing manner :—"At the

end of 1833 there met at Leipsic every evening a

number of for the greater pa rt young musicians,

principally with a view to friendly intercourse, butalso in order to exchange their thoughts aboutthe art which had become the bread and wine of

their life, i.e. music. It cannot be said that the

musical conditions of Germany were at that time of

a very satisfactory nature . On the stage Eossiniwielded the sceptre, while the piano was almostexclusively dominated by Herz and Hiinten. And

nevertheless only a few years were passed, sinceBeethoven, Weber, and Schubert lived amongstus.

I t is true that Mendelssohn's starwas rising, andof Chopin the Pole wonderful thin gs wererumoured ; but the lasting effect of these two camelater. One day the idea struck the young enthu-siasts. i Let us not be idle lookers on, let us work

in order that things may grow different and better,that the poetry of art may again receive its due

honour ! 1 In this way the first pages of a new

' Journa l for Music ' saw the ligh t."




To th e description of musical barrenness given by

Schumann in the above we must add, that the only-critical organ of consequence was the celebrated' Musical G az ette ' (Allgemeine musikalische Ze itung),which, edited by one Fink, still enjoyed to a greatex ten t the prestige of critical infallibility attached

to Eochlitz's name, and, true to its old traditionssmiled down upon contemporary labour with a sub-lime ignorance, equalled only by its natu ra l com-pound, impertinen t self-assertion. To break thespell of th is monstrous imposition was one of the

chief aims of the " young musicians," and foremostof Schumann himself; and the achievement of hisnoble efforts, in counteracting the antiquated preju-dices of Ph ilistinism would alone secure h im a pro-minent position amongst his fellow-workers in the

domain of artistic progress.From this, however, it m ust not be concluded that

Schumann's writings bore any signs of that harshand combative nature, which seems to be the cha-racte r of all great reformers from Lu ther andKnox

to "Wagner. Schumann is, on the contrary , ofa de-cidedly affirmative natu re . "We find in him only fewtraces of all-denying satire, or of the sublime indig-na tion of gen ius against mediocrity. I t seems, as if

p




he proceeded in his writings on the principle,

that a single talent of tender n atu re, crushed byadverse criticism would be an abso lute loss of greaterconsequence, than the harm that might possiblyarise from a temporary success of well-intentionedinability. His accusations are therefore more

directed against bad principles, like em pty virtuosity,and similar vices, than against individual evil-doers.The only eminent men whom he has treated, withdecided, nay harsh antagonism are, to the bestof my knowledge, Meyerbeer and Richard Wagner.

The spectacular attem pts at clumsiest music-hallpop ularity, mixed up in the works of the first-mentioned composer with beauties of a highorder, make it easy to account for th e sweepingcriticism of a sensitive na ture like Schu mann 's;

and as to his aversion to the works of by far thegreatest creative power of th e age, we shall alsonot be at a loss to find a psychological explana-tion of a phenomenon so astonishing at firstsight.

On the other hand, the merits of the new criticalorgan in encouraging and introducing to the publicnotice a number of aspiring talents are undeniable.The very first appearance of Schum ann in the



ROBERT SCHUMANN. 2i%

journalistic career, even before his own paper was

started, consisted in a panegyric of Chopin, whose" Opus I I . " had, after many previous unsuccessfulattem pts, ju st then found a pub lisher. Berlioz, theeccentric apostle of French romanticism in music,was first acknowledged and defended against the

attacks of German pseudo-patriotism by Schum ann,who did the same service to the talented youngEnglishman, William Sterndale Bennett.

The grea test p raise is also due to Schumann'snoble exertions in bringing to the ligh t of pub lic

admiration the hidden treasures of Schubert's post-humous compositions. As a rule the world looksw ith a not unjustified suspicion on the discoveriesof outsiders, from the artistic bequests of departedcelebrities. Such men generally know best what

may be conducive to the ir own greatness, and th enon-publication of a work du ring the ir lifetimewould in most cases not reflect favourably on theprobability of its intrinsic value; barring of coursereasons of personal d iscretion, which seldom or never

app ly to the inoffensive sphere of our art. Thepublication of some of Mendelssohn 'sceuvrespost/times for instance , shows distinctly the supe-

p 2




riority of the master's own criticism over that of his

ill-advised admirers.But in Schubert's case th is was different. W ith

him the publication of a work was no t a question ofbeing willing, bu t of beingable. W e have mentionedin our last chapter, with how much hesitation even

his works of smallest size and greates t popu larity,that is his songs, were received by blockheaded pub -lishers, who would have stood aghast at th e offer ofa

symphony or opera, in which risk and chance wouldof course have been at still less favourable odds.

Schuber t's MS. scores were therefore trea ted at hisdeath with a neglect quite in accordance with theirlow price in the market, and the search for themcould not but hig hly attract the curiosity of amusical enthusiast.

"When Schumann went to Vienna in 1838, his firstpilgrimage was directed to the Wahring cemetery,to offer his pious gift of flowers on th e graves ofBeethoven and Schubert. On that of th e greatermaster he found a bush of wild roses, while Schubert's

resting-place was unadormed . On Beethoven 'stombstone he also discovered a steel pen which hepreserved as a hallowed treasure, and ever after-




wards only used to indite his most inspired thoug hts .

W h en Schumann left the g raves, almost envyingthe one resting between such two, he was suddenlyreminded of Schubert's surviving bro ther Ferdinand,and to his humble dwelling in a suburb of Vienna,he forthwith wended his way. " H e knew me "

Schumann says " from my admiration for his brother,as I had expressed it in public, and told and showedme many things. At last he let me look at thetreasures of Franz Schu bert's compositions, which hestill possesses. The wealth, that lay heaped up,

made me shudder with j o y : what to take first,where to cease ? Am ongst other things, he alsoshowed me th e scores of several symphonies ofwhich many had never been heard, wh ile others hadbeen tried, bu t p u t back again on the ground of

thei r being too difficult and bombastic." One ofthose symphonies, th at in C major, the largest andgrandest in conception, Schum ann chose and sentto Leipsic, where it soon afterwards was performedat a Gewandhausconcert under Mendelssohn's

direction. The success was immediate and of deepimport. H ere the astonished world witnessed forthe first time th e powers, in a more expanded sphere,



2 i4 ROBERT SCHUMANN.

of a composer the very beauties of whose songs

had hitherto proved fatal to his general fame.*For Schumann this public sanction of his bold

prognostication must have been a source of purestunselfish joy.

It remains to add a few remarks about the atti-

tude of our critic towards his more successfulrival Mendelssohn. It was tha t of unconditionaladmiration, sometimes bordering on the prostratedevotion of a worshipper. For more particularinformation about the relations of the two men,

highly creditable as they are to the noble un-selfishness of Schumann's mind, if not to his

critical acumen, we refer the reader to his

writings, collected and edited by himself, in fourvolumes, and also to the valuable work on his life,

by Herr von Wasielewski. t I will only quote a

*Tbe other symphonies alluded to (eight in number, someof them only partly finished) have since been obtainedandproduced at the Crystal Palace through the unceasing energyof Mr. G-. Grove. This gentleman and M r. A. Manns sharewith Schumann and Liszt the honour of having recognised,and made others recognise, the great beautiesof Franz Schu-bert's instrumental compositions.

f I t has been noticed, that in the collection of Mendelssohn'sletters the name of Schumann occurs, if at all, only in an occa-sional manner. Considering the friendly intercoursein which




few sentences from a letter hitherto unpublished

in Germ any, which was addressed to a zealouscon tributor of the ' N eue Zeitschrift,' H er r vonZuccalmaglio. After his death it came, w ith sixteenothers, into the possession of the present writer, andwas published by him in the ' Academ y.'* The

reader may consider it, at the same time, as a speci-men of Schumann's epistolary style at this period,and compare its m ilder enthusiasm w ith the unalloyed" Jean P au lis m " of the young student. The dateof the letter is Leipsic, Ja nuary 31st, 1837, and, as

the only commentary required, I will add, that" E rs te Tone,." was an article on Mendelssohn, whichhad appeared in Schumann's paper, and that Wedelwas one of Zuccalmaglio's numerous pseudonyms :

"both stood at Leipsic, it is almost incredible that Mendelssohnshould in his remarks on music have wholly ignored the nume-rous and, at any rate, original works of his admiring friend.The circumstance is generally explained from a narrow-mindedjealousy of the editors of Mendelssohn's Letters, who mightnot be desirous of adding his testimonial to the rival com-poser's overpowering fame; but would it not be also possible

to conjecture, that the admiration of the two masters was no tmutual, and that Mendelssohn's u tterances have been wiselysuppressed, as not redounding to the credit of his liberal-mindedness ?

* See Appendix II.



2i6 ROBERT SCHUMANN.

" M Y DEAESlE,

" First of all I must tell you, how I gave Mendelssohn,,with whom I dine every day, your article, ' Erste Tone.' Istood aside and watched his faceto see what impression wouldbe made upon him by your last sentence, which,I confess, hadseveral times brought the tears into my own eyes. H e readthearticle attentively; his face (what a glorious, divine faceit is !)revealed all his impressions as he came to the passage. I t wasa pity you could not see him. ' H a ! ' he cried, ' what's this ?That is really too much : I am quite delighted. Therearedifferent kinds of praise; bu t th is comes from a pu re hear t.'Youshould have seen him and heard him. ' Ten thousand thanksto the man who wrote this.' So he went en until we divedinto our champagne. The fact is, as I have long ago made

up my mind, there is no man who can write on music likeWedel; aud I think I can read the same verdict in the deli-cate but continued motion of Mendelssohn's countenance,which is a record of all that is passing both w ithin and with-out him Do you know his St. Paul, in which one

beauty relieves another without interruption? He was thefirst to grant to the Grraces a place in the houseof Grod, wherethey certainly ought not to be forgotten. H itherto they havenot been able to make their voices heard for the multitudeof fugues. Do read St. Paul—the sooner the better. You.will find in it nothing of Handel or Bach, whatever peoplemay say, except in so far as all church music must be alike,"etc.

Thus much about Schumann's critical power.Upon the whole it must be said that his influenceon the progress of contemporary music was of a

beneficial kind. Young aspiring talen ts were sureto<




find friendly appreciation, and in many cases, valu-

able advice, in the columns of the new organ, fromwhich, on the other hand, the currents of vu lgar puffwere strictly excluded. Schumann had the instinc-tiv e horror of a gentleman against th e low practicesof artistic humbug, and sometimes, as in the case of

Meyerbeer, was not able to perceive the goodcrop in the midst of lux ur ian t weeds. I t mustalso be confessed that chiefly in his latter years hewas by no means free from that onesidedness, in-separable as it seems from creative genius, which

looks upon every thing outside of its own circle oflight as utter darkness.

It remains to say a few words about the style inwhich the results of Schumann's speculative powerwere delivered, which was a very extraordinary

one indeed. H ere are some ex tracts from asoi-disant criticism on Chopin's Don Juan fantasia,which was published by Schumann in the old* Musical Gazette,' two years before the starting ofhis own jou rna l. One can imagine the astonish-

ment of the faithful reader of this solemn organ,when, amongst the utterances of his Dryasdustoracle, he suddenly hit upon the following eccentriceffusion: " A n Opus II.— Euse biu s gently opened




the door. You know the ironical smile on his

pale face, which he puts on to make one curious.I was sitting at the piano with Florestan. Flo-

restan, as you know, is one of those rare music-individuals who divine everything future, new and

extraordinary in advance. Still to-day he was to

be taken by surprise. Eusebius called out: ' Hatsoff, gentlemen, here goes a genius, ' and opened a

piece of music before us. The title we were not

allowed to see. I was glancing through the bookhalf unconsciously ; this veiled enjoyment of music

without sound has a particular charm for me.Besides, it seems to me as if each single composerhad his own groupings of notes for the eye.

Beethoven looks different on paper from Mozart, in

the same way as the prose of Jean Paul looks

unlike that of Goethe. But now it was to me as ifnumbers of strange eyes were strangely lookingat

me, eyes of flowers, of basilisks, of butterflies, of

girls. At other places it became lighter; I thoughtI heard Mozart's La ci darem winding through hun-

dreds of harmonies; Leporello seemed to wink,and Don Juan flew past me in his white cloak."

The article goes on, describing in the same exaltedstrain, how the young enthusiasts play the piece




with increasing delight, which is brought to a

climax of admiring bewilderment when they find,on referring to the title-page, that the work is notby Beethoven or Schubert, but an Opus II., adebutof an unknow n composer, Frederic Chopin. Theyforthwith repair to their adviser and friend, Master

Earo, who smiles at their new idol with the cau-tious wisdom of his riper years, but promises aclose scru tiny of the case. The final scene showsFlorestan reclining on his sofa in a half dream,expounding the poetical inspirations found by him

in Chopin's " V ariations ," intermixed w ith sundryrem arks of a more critical character on the struc-ture of the new piece.

I have on purpose quoted from the first articleever produced by Schumann, because, although

in a slightly exaggerated form, it fully shows atonce the power and weakness of his aestheticw ritings . H e never attempted to give an objective,or, as it is more grandly but less correctly called, animpartial analysis of a composition. H e felt him -

self that the position of one creative mind towardsanother must have a strong alloy of personal bias init. Th is he never even tries to conceal, and for thatvery reason he personifies the various sides of his




own character, and shows how differently one and

the same work may have acted upon himin differentmoods, or might act according to the predispo-sition of the mind to which it appealed. Florestanand Eusebius, who have been introduced to the

reader in the foregoing sketch, are only, to speak

with Faust, the " two souls in his breas t ; " Euse-bius the mild receptive dreamer, Florestan the fieryenthusiast, wild and impulsive in his hatred and

love, and armed with a divine recklessness withregard to other people's prejudices.

These two are stereotyped figures in Schumann'swritings. His articles are alternately signed witheither pseudonym, according to the tone of theircriticism. Sometimes they bo th give their indiv idualjudgments on one and the same work, and in such

cases Master Earo (also knownto the reader), whowas meant to symbolise the calmly speculative sidein Schumann's nature, is referred to for final judg-ment. Sometimes also various other characters,like Julius and Zelia, are introduced and grouped

together in a kind of brotherhood or secret society—"more than secret ," as Schumann himself after-wards declared, " for it existed only in the head of

its founder." The name of this imaginary society




was the " D avidsbund ," probably from K ing

D avid and his celebrated ha rp. A t one time,however, it does not seem to have been quite asimaginary , as might be concluded from the ju stquoted lines, which, by the way, were writtennearly twenty years later, and at a period when

Schumann looked back upon the eccentricities ofhis yo uth from a distance g reater even than thatmarked by th is lapse of time. Baro was generallyconsidered to have been the personification ofFriedrich Wieck, and certain features of other

David-associates were also traced to persons ofreal existence.

How seriously the plan of an actual society (per-haps somewhat analogous to the " Pre-Eaphaelitebro therhoo d" in this coun try) was considered by

Schumann, becomes for the first time evident froma passage in the once before cited series of letters." I have a variety of plans and schemes for which Iwant your assistance," writes Schumann to Zuccal-maglio on May 18th, 1837 . " F irst of all I have

been thinking for a long time of giving real life tothe Davidsbund, by bringing men of the sameopinion (even if not professional musicians) in acloser connection by means of signs and symbols.




If academies with dunces at their heads, designate-

their members, why should not we, the youngergeneration, do the same ? " Although this schemeof an academy with anti-academicians as membersproved abortive, the charm of Florestan and Eusebiusas imaginary creations remains unimpaired,and it is

with regret that the reader of Schumann's collectedworks sees them turn up more and more seldom,till at last they quite disappear, together with a

good deal of their originator's freshness of style and

perception. The fact is that in his later years

Schumann's position in musical questions becameessentially altered, and he used against himselftha t sweeping judgm ent, which in the inarticulatelongings of his early career could only see the

juvenile and silly. Unfortunately the same remark

applies to his views about the ultimate aims of hisart, and the breakage which we discern in the de-

velopment of his sesthetical notions could not but

react upon the direction of his creative power.

The deeper causes of the vital change in the

whole artistic existence of Schumann, which after a

gradual growth of many years reached its climaxwith the beginning of his third or "o rches t r a l "period, we shall have to consider in the ensuingremarks.




3.

In the first chapter of this book I have tried tofollow as closely as possible the rise of what I calledth e " poetic principle in music " from the earliesttimes till Beethoven. I have shown that in every

art there exists a duality of intention, namely, onone side the original passionate impulse, previous toits tak ing any distinct form, and secondly, the innateorder of beauty belonging to the particular art inquestion. I further tried to prove that the intensity

of this impulse in Beethoven's later works all bu tbroke through the forms of music proper, and atlast, in the Ninth Symphony, absolutely requiredthe complement of words. The consistent carry ingout of Beethoven's grand reformatory act, I at last

professed to see in Wagner's music-drama.Schumann also felt instinctively the necessity of

introducing the fresh life of poetical pulsation intothe dead formalism of absolute music. W e haveseen before that he wrote on his banner the war cry

of "p o et ry in ar t," and that he acknowledges theaffinity between his ar t and contemporary phasesof lite rature, by calling himself and his friendsromantic musicians. The works of his first period^




all conceived at and written for the pianoforte, show

in the ir small forms all th at pointedness of exag -gerated, not to say transcendental, sentimentalismwhich forms the typical character of Eichter's prose,and (mixed up already with self-consuming irony) ofHeine's lyrics. I t seems, indeed, as if the demand

of some connection with the art of poetry had beenfelt at that time by musicians of the most divergenttendencies. Even Mendelssohn acknowledged it ina certain sense by calling his short pianoforte pieces" songs withou t words ; " that is, snatches of lyr ical

effusion, with an underlying although not expressedpoetical meaning. On the other hand , it is wellknown how the occult idea struggling in Beethoven 'slater works ran riot in the mind of the youngmedical studen t Berlioz. W ith the strong aversion

of the French character against purely ideal gene-ralisations, he looked for a more tangib le basis of h isinspiration, and in consequence clad the lofty con-ceptions of Beethoven in the distinct forms of a story.

Schumann, as we have seen, declared himself the

advocate of Berlioz, whom he imitated to a certainex ten t by affixing to his lyrical pianoforte piecestitles sometimes full of poetic suggestiveness, butnot seldom also w ithout any recognisable re lat ion




to the character of the piece. But, strange to say,

Schumann always laid particular stress upon thefact, that these denominations had been added to

the composition after its being finished, with a viewonly to guiding the player, as to the way in whichit was to be rendered. This one fact is sufficient

to show the utter misconception on the part ofSchumann of Beethoven's reformatory efforts. For

it proves that the expression of a distinct poeticidea, as we discerned it in Beethoven, was at all

times absent from his mind. In reality, the music

even of his ' Sturm und Drang' period was quiteas absolute as that of Mozart and H aydn. The poeticelement in his works never amounted to more thanthe unconscious mood in which every work of art

must be conceived, but never passed through the

medium of conscious feeling before its embodimentin sound. To say tha t in the ' Carnival ' or the

' Pap i l lons ' the pure source of Beethoven's mightytradition is flowing, and to invest the slender formof the most subjective lyrist with the grand folds

of the prophet's cloak, seems indeed almost tooabsurd even for the blindest worshipper. Still,such is the hue and cry of a powerful school in

music called after our composer's name, and repre-

Q




sented by an imposing number of talented and

deyoted disc iples. The fact, how ever, is, th a t tothe master himself, as well as to his pupils , some-thing in Beethoven has remained, and, as it seems,will remain for ever an indissoluble mys tery . Thenum erous attem pts of Schumann to br ing down

Beethoven's grand conceptions to the leyel of hisown whimsical romanticism, sometimes result inthe most glaring incongruities. I n th e wonderfulFinale of Bee thoven's Sym phony in A major,he sees only the description of a jolly wed-

ding , the bride being " a celestial maiden w itha rose in her hair, bu t one on ly ," etc. etc. Incomparing this jargon of sentimental affectationwith the programm e to the N inth Symphony, w rittenby Wagner more than five and twenty years ago,*

one can indeed not remain doubtful, in which of thetwo composers' works to look for the continuedflow of the great master's inspiration.

In thinking it my duty to oppose current preju-dices, it is at the same tim e far from my wish to denythe indescribable beauty of Schumann's early works,which bear undoubtedly the stamp of genius of thefirst order. A ll the charms of ind istinct longing, of

* See Appendix, page 292.




youthful enthusiasm, and of the most striking origi-

nality in conception and execution, fill us withever fresh delight in listening to the strains of theSonata in F sharp minor, the Etudes Sym pho-niques, or the K reis leriana ; and upon the occasionaleccentricities or shortcomings in their formal tre at -

ment, we are inclined to look with a much lesscritical eye than the composer himself used to do ata later period.

W e have recognised a strong desire on Schu-mann's part of embodying his individual feelings

and sufferings in his art, a desire for which thepianoforte alone, even with the enlarged scopeopened to it by his own works, could scarcelybe considered as the appropriate instrument.Schumann also felt th e want of the spoken

word as the firm starting-point of his lofty flights,and he was fortunate enough to find a poet full ofthe deepest pathos, and at the same time congenialto himself by the strongly individualised mode ofhis expression. Th is poet was Heinrich Heine,

the " spoiled favourite of the graces," the hero andvictim of modern thought and misery, "the knightw ith th e laug hing tear in his scutcheon," who de-scended into the deepest depths of the heart, and




brought back the jewels of his songs, clear and

flashing like ice, but reflecting in their crystallinesurface the brightest rays and the darkest shades of

human passion.

And here again I am sorely tempted to digressupon a subject nearest to my interest, viz. the

almost total absence of what might be called" artistic song " in the literature of this island, the

causes of which I find partly in the disdain of poetsto stoop to the simple utterance of the popularmuse, partly in the particular nature of this popular

poetry itself, which to a prevailing extent took thenarrative form of the ballad, and therefore seemedless adapted for the infusion of lyrical impulse.*

* I must add here, parenthetically, that the charmingsnatches of song of disputed origin, transmitted to us in

Elizabethan dramas, seem to me to show distinctly the tracesof artistic consciousness,and are indeed partly referable toprofessional poets, like ' Come with me, and be my love,' toK it Marlowe. They, therefore, do not quite come under thecategory of popular song, and show indeed but slightaffinity witb the ' Volkslied.' Robert Burns , on the otherhand, the great singer of songs, purposely limited himself tothe simplicity of popular feeling, and, therefore, although agreat artist, did not write what I have called " artistic songs "par excellence. I will, however, by no means deny that thesongs of both Burns and the Elizabethan poets, and the rem-nants of the old tunes to which most of them were written,




Or was it perhaps the want of music as a

national ar t, which failed to encourage the greatEnglish lyrists to proportionate efforts in this direc-tion, and induced, for instance, Byron to assignalways his weakest stanzas " t o m u s ic ? " B ut Ifeel bu t too deeply how abrup t and " no t proven "

my remarks in their necessary conciseness mustappear, and therefore gladly re tu rn to my imme-diate subject.

The high position which Schumann takes amongthe masters of German song, has been sufficiently

defined by his being called the musical ex-ponent of Heine . I t seems, indeed, not un likelythat the verdict of an impartial posterity willbase his chief claims to immortality on suchworks as the settings of ' I c h grolle nich t,' and

th e whole ' D ichterliebe ' series, not to speak ofinnum erab le other ' L ieder,' small in form, but

contain hopeful germs of th e regeneration of English lyrica lmusic on a national basis. I havemyself, on another occasion,expressed my belief in this desired possibility by word anddeed. Only we must first of all clear the English song, onthe one hand, from the atmosphere of the music-hall attachingto it, and on the other, from the strong tinge of sentimentalPhilistinism which, in my eyes, is one of the most dangerousvices of this nation , fostered in our particular case by theoverpowering influence of Mendelssohn and his imitators.



23o ROBERT SCHUMANN.

disclosing the infinite perspective of lyrica l pa thos,

and unsurpassable in the congenial rendering of thepoet's sentiments. I t is tru e th a t Schum ann didnot invent or even advance the artistic form of thesong. Th is form indeed occurs w ith its essentialvariations in Beethoven himself, and was after him

filled with the inexhaustible beauties of Schubert'smelodiousness. B u t Beethoven 's broad dram aticconceptions were always to some ex ten t embarrassedby the narrow limits of the song, and in Schubertwe miss sometimes that careful entering into the

minutest intentions of the poet, which must beconsidered as the prominent feature of the latestphase of music. Besides, bo th these grea t com-posers were extremely limited as to the poeticalmaterials at their disposal. The artistic song in

German literature dates only from Goethe, and hisacquaintance with Herder's researches in interna-tional popu lar poetry. Goethe remained the onlyvaluable resort of Beethoven's, and for a long timealso of Schubert's lyrical muse. The latter master

only recognised the rising stars of Heine andBiikert. Schum ann's position in this respect wasmuch more favoured by fortune. H e stood in themidst of the literary movement of his time, and




"was prepared both by his genius and education

to recast the newly acquired treasures of poetry inth e mould of his own ar t. The progress, therefore,marked by his songs was achieved by poeticalra ther tha n by musical means, another proof ofthe organic and indivisible connection of the two

sister arts.The duration of Schum ann 's song-time was

com paratively short. The grea ter part of hisLieder were w ritten in 184 0, a year which, at thesame time, was the most eventful in his quiet life.

The rest of the working time allotted to him—forhe did work to the last incessantly—Lwas given upto the greater forms of vocal and instrumentalmusic, as the oratorio, symphony, and the variouskin ds of chamber music. Th is third period m ight

be briefly characterised as the return to form. W enav e mentioned the strong aversion which Schumannat first felt for the serious study of the technicalbasis of his ar t. The contempt against the esta-blished rules, as witnessed in his juvenile works,

althou gh to a great ex ten t arising from the boldnessof aspiring genius, was also partly due to his actualw an t of fundamental knowledge, and this neglect




eould not but result in a strong reaction as the com-

poser reached the stage of artistic discretion. Henow became a fervent advocate of the necessity and

venerableness of established rules, and conscien-tiously removed the traces of his youthful eccen-tricities from revised editions of his earlier works.

I t is also from this point of view that we mustjudge the objections raised by him against the

gigantic attempts at revolutionising and recon-structing musical art from top to bottom, whichhave made the name of Richard Wagner the

symbol of hope for the rising generation. Or wasit perhaps the instinctive aversion of the failingagainst the successful man, which, added to the en-

tirely heterogeneous nature of "Wagner's genius, in

this one instance overcame the usual generosity of

Schumann's character, and made his own war cry

of "poetry in music" sound harsh and dreadfulfrom his rival's lips ?

The works of Schuman's third period are nume-rous and comprise almost all the forms of vocal and

instrumental music, not always treated w ith equalsuccess, but always full of power, and of tha tstrong touch of individuality which forms a promi-nent feature of his nature. We count among




these, four symphonies, w ith the fragments of a

fifth, two so-called profane oratorios, the ' P e r i /after Moore's well-known poem from ' LallaEookh, ' and the ' Pilgrimage of the Kose,' both fullof lyrical and phantastic beauties of the first order,b u t lagging occasionally throug h an evident want

of dramatic concentration, combined with a ten-dency towards painting in detail. The samewan t of the broad conception of a dramaticpoet proved abso lutely fatal to his only opera,Genevieve,which, notwithstanding the redeeming

charms of numerous beautiful passages, has neverbeen able to move the hearts of the hearers withthe irresistible force of dramatic passion.

I t is also a noticeable fact that the two repre-sentative heroes of modern thought and doubt,

' Manfred ' and ' Faust,' have been favoured sub-jects of Schumann's muse. The spark of ' We l t -schmerz ' (as the Germans call the spirit of deepestdespondency and fierce defiance, resulting from the

wisdom of our latter days) in Byron's poem, was

sufficient to kindle the congenial flame in the com-poser's bosom, and inspire him with conceptionsnever surpassed in depth of pathos, and bitterness-of self-torturing passion. The setting, on the other




hand, of the epilogue in heaven of Goethe'sFaust

displays the rest after life's battle of which thelonging soul dreams in its purest aspirations, andranks with its deep chiaroscuro of mystical ecstasyamongst the highest efforts which our art has everbeen capable of.

It would be exceeding the original plan of thisbook merely to hint at the numerous interestingpoints of discussion suggested by the latter part ofSchum ann 's career. Our purpose was chiefly toshow the true character of the progressive side of

his activity, falsely connected with Beethoven'slatest works, with which in reality it shows only aslight resemblance. Th is revo lutionary spirit was,the contrary, to repeat it again, disavowed by thework of Schumann's riper years. The contempt of

form coincided in him, with his ignorance of it;when he began to master the technical part of hisart, he clung to it w ith unflinching fidelity. Con-sidering him merely as a reformer of music on apoetical basis, as his quand meme admirers are but

too inclined to do, we should have to call his careera decided failure, if it did not seem altogether un-grateful to mention such a word in connection with




a man who has given us the ' Carnival, ' the Songs,1

Faust , ' and the Symphony in C.

4 .

We have only a few words to add about Schu-

mann's personal character, and the events whichform the scanty materials for his biography.

Even in the buoyancy of youthful enthusiasm,lie was distinguished by a particular kind of

apparent absent-mindedness, which, withoutpre-

venting his listening attentively to what was goingon, still would not let him take an active part in the

conversation. His increasing silence became pro-

verbial among his friends. Once, it is told, he

entered a lady's drawing-room, smiled in his placid

w ay at the company present, and opening the

piano, played a few chords ; after which he madeMs exit, smiling again, but without having spokena single syllable. Only on rare occasions, and

amongst very intimate friends, an interesting topic-would induce him to give full utterance to his

opinions. The characteristic feature of his personalexistence was an utter want of demonstrativeness,sometimes amounting to actual shyness. Schumann.




himself was conscious of this fact, and has described

his social accomplishments with the almost exagge-rated modesty characterising also his numerous say-ings about h is own a rt. " I shall be very glad tosee you her e, " he writes to Zuccalmaglio. " Inme, however, you must not expect to find much. I

scarcely ever speak except in the evening, andmost in playing the piano."

H is professional career may be summed upin the fewest words. After ed iting his musicaljournal for • nearly ten years, he went to Dres-

den with no particular position, but that ofconductor of a singing academy. From there hewas called to Diisseldorf, in order to lead theconcerts of the celebrated musical institute of thatcity . H is official du ties , however, proved soon too

much for h is declining health ; and after a few yearshe dropped the baton for ever, without great loss toart or to himself, na ture hav ing refused him th emost essential qualities of a conductor. The mo-notony of his daily life was occasionally interrupted

by artistic tours, amongst which those to Eussia andHolland were the most successful. On both occa-sions he was accompanied by his wife, the celebratedpianiste, Clara Schumann, so well know n as th e




congenial interp reter of her husband 's inspirations,

bo th on the Continent and in Eng land . Th e unionwith her was the source of deepest happiness tohim . W on after many troubles, and againstth e obstinate resistance of her father, Friedrich"Wieck, she remained Schumann's truest friend and

helpmate, affianced to him not only by the power oflove, but also by the elective bonds of gen ius. I thas seldom been the happy lot of an artist to see hismost intim ate feelings and aspirations so perfectlyunderstood, nay even in terpreted to the world, by

the mother of his children.B u t even th is faithful companion could no t

ward off his doom. A s early as 1833, Schu-mann's friends were frigh tened by a state ofmorbidness in his feelings, which, increased by

the sudden news of a nea r relation's death, atlast led to an attack of what seems to have beenve ry like actual madness. H e himself speaks inhis diary of " t h e dreadful night of the 17th. ofOctober," and a clue to this mysterious expression

we may see in the circumstance that he immediatelychanged the fourth story in which he was living atth e time for a lower one, and never afterwardscould be induced to take up his quarters in the




upper pa rt of a house. From th a t time the fore-

shadowed idea of his fate seems never to have beenabsent from his mind, showing itself in an un-accountable horror of anything connected withmadness. So when the position at Diisseldorf isfirst offered to him, he writes to Hiller for advice

as though on a point of vital im por tan ce : " Iwas looking the other day in an old geographicalbook for information abou t Diisseldorf, and there Ifound mentioned, amongst the curiosities, threenunneries and one lunatic asylum. Against the

former I have not the slightest objection, butabout the latter it was very unpleasan t to me toread."

I will not trouble the reader with a detailedaccount of the slow progress of the terrible fate

which was to extinguish the flame of Schu-mann's gen ius. The following passage from ale tte r may suffice to indicate the circumstanceswh ich contributed to hasten th e catastrophe. I tshows at the same time how, even in the wildest

flights of his troubled imagination, the abso rbinginterest of his mind remained his art. The lette rfrom which w e quote is addressed to H iller , anddated—




Diisseldorf, April 23,1853." Yesterday we have been rapping tables for the first time.

I t is a wonderful power. Fancy, I asked it about the rhythmof th e two first bars of the symphony in C minor. A t first itrefused to answ er; but at last it began, "iJ^ J^ N l|, but veryslowly. W hen I told it, " But th is is much too slow, mydear table, ' it began at once beating the right time. I alsoasked, if it could tell me the number I was thinking of, and it

answered correctly, ' T hre e .' "We were all of us in u tteramazem ent, and felt surrounded with miracles. Enough, Iwas to-day too full of what I had seen not to speak of it."

According to a tradition, Beethoven, when askedabout the poetic meaning of the mentioned motive

of his fifth symphony, answered: "So klopft dasSchicksal an die Pforte" ("It is thus that destinyknocks at the gate"). For Schumann these wordsproved to contain a prophetic warning. Not quitea year after the date of this letter he tried to drown

the horrors of his approaching madness in theEhine, and on the 20th of July, 1856, he died inthe asylum at Endenich, near Bonn, in the cemeteryof which town he lies buried.



ROBERT FRANZ. 241

also to its musical treatment. In consequence the

musical market was soon swamped with a neverceasing flow of lyrical effusion, and the typicalshibboleth of " Sechs Lieder fur eine Singstimme"on the Opus 1 of aspiring youths becamea sign of

horror to the German critic.

.But th is loud chorus of babbling mediocritymust not deafen us to the voices of the prophets of

true genius. Am ongst the disciples of Schumann,for instance, we count men like Kubinstein, Brahms,J . 0 . Grimm, and others, w ith full sounding

names in the land of song. Still, it cannot besaid that these composers have essentially advancedthe form of the song in the- abstract. Brahms, forinstance, where he tries to expand the limits of

this form (in his ' Eom anzen from Tieck's Schone

Magelone'), looses holdof the essential features ofthe species itself, that is, he writes beautiful piecesof vocal music of a nondescript character, and of no

relevancy with regard to the formal, and still lessto what we call thepoetical progress of the song.

This takes us back to the starting point of ourresearches, i.e., the victory of pure poetic im-

pulse over musical formalism,the accomplishmentof which we discerned in "Wagner's music-drama.

E



242 ROBERT FRANZ.

The same processwe now shall witness in a modified

w ay in the latest phase of lyrical music. Forthis purpose I will introduce the reader to two

living masters of song, both of strongly pronouncedindividuality, and neither of them under the directinfluence of any of the above-mentioned writers.

I am speaking of Franz Liszt and Robert Franz.The artistic career of both has been widely

different, and their treatment of the particular formof art in question has also little in common; stillthere is one feature peculiar to either, which is

sufficiently important to explain the combination oftheir names in these pages, and indicative at the

same time of the only basis on which a furtherorganic progress of the song seems possible. L isztand Franz are both poets, before they are musicians.

The strength of their musical renderings dependsentirely on the beauty of the words interpretedby them. In composers of the last century we

often observe, how very little their music is con-

nected with, and therefore depends upon, the

underlying text , and even Schubert makes usforget occasionally the silliness of his words by dintof absolute m elodious charm. But both Liszt and

Franz are in an eminent sense masters of the



ROBERT FRANZ. 243

m odern , or shall we call it the " future " school.

The ir inspiration is essentially of a receptive ,feminine kind, and the greater or less intrins icvalue of a poem set by them may infallibly beguessed by perusing their music even without thewords.

2.

In writing down the name of Bobert Franz I amsadly conscious that to many of my English readersits characters may be an all but new or, at least,

a most unw onted sight. H is songs do not appear onthe programmes of our numerous ballad concerts;indeed, I am not sure tha t many of them have beenpublicly sung in London, a fact which once moreshows the sad deficiencies of mutual intercourse

amongst the nations, even in that most internationalof languages, music. Fo r in his own country, th eplace of Franz, amongst the greatest masters ofsong, and as the first of living lyrists is disputed byfew, and in the concert-halls of Boston and New

Y ork his works are , it is said, received with en-thusiasm ; the question, why it should have beeneasier for the wings of his fame to cross the Atlantic,tha n the narrow strip of water to which En gland

E 2



244 ROBERT FRANZ.

owes so much, deserves the grave consideration of

the music publisher, the geographer, and thestud ent of national phrenology . T myself feel bu ttoo deeply the great disadvantage of having to con-struct my conclusions on facts and premises un-known to the reader; but seeing that all exponents

of new thin gs are heirs to the same evil, I m uststrengthen my courage with the hope, that hereand there some one may be induced by mywords to test the ir veracity by persona l investiga-tion.*

The considerable amount of critical literatureproduced in Germany,ad vocem E. Franz, has, uponthe whole, proved of little use in furthe ring my aims.Th e help for instance which th e ' Study on Eobe rtFranz,' by the well-known historian, "W. Am bros?

m ight possibly afford me, would be more than out-weighed by the time and patience I should haveto spend in pointing out, and eventually combating,shades of opinion more or less at variance with my

* Three selections of Franz's works, containing togethermore than a hundred songs, have been published by the firmsof Leuckart, Peters, and Breitkopf und Hartel of Leipsic, andmay be had for almost the same price as Englishmen arewilling to pay for one or two commonplace ballads of nativegrowth.



ROBERT FRANZ. 245

own. The only exception here forms Franz L is z t;

the impressive eloquence of his style shows nowhereto greater advantage than in pleading the merits ofmen whom a nature less generous would look uponas dangerous rivals. I shall quote from thebiographical part of his pamphlet on "Kobert

Franz," the more freely, as in this way my formerremarks on the graceful elegance of Liszt's writingswill best be illustrated . As a still more valu-ab le clue to the hidden sources of our composer'sinspiration, I have to mention several interest-

ing letters addressed by him to me, the use ofwhich, for my present purpose, has been kindlygranted.

Eobert Franz was born in 1815 at Halle, a smallun ivers ity town in Prussian Saxony. H is early

youth passed without any incidents of import-ance. The atmosphere in his father's house was th atof old-fashioned narrowmindness, and when the firstsigns of musical talent showed themselves, the boyfound no encouragem ent. Only reluctantly his

father allowed him to profit by what little instruc-ti o n the second-rate music teachers of his nativetow n could afford. Even under the oppressiveinfluence of four different masters Franz knew



246 ROBERT FRANZ.

how to preserve intact the spontaneous freedomof

his feeling. This sta te of self-asserted liberty,dangerous as it might have been to many, contri-buted, as Liszt remarks, perhaps more thanany-

thing else towards the autodidactic characterof

Franz's talent. " For the elect of the muse,

the predestinedof art, are like the bees which, fromthe petals of poisonous flowers, suck forth sweetaromatic nourishment." The desire of every truemusician of executing and hearing himself execute,or, as Liszt puts it, his longing for virtuosity in

some form, Franz satisfied by applying himselfpassionately to the organ. It is said that of

a Sunday he used to race from one church to

another, asking the various cantors to let him

play part of the service. Th is ex traord inary zeal

was consideredby his father and his masters at thecollege, as a mild form of lunacy, dangerous in so

far only as it detained the youth from the more"sol id" branches of learning; his co-discipleswere apt to treat the silent and timid enthusiastas a

downright fool.Only the musical professor of the college

recognised the gift of his pupil and raisedhim to the post of accompanist of the choir. I t



ROBERT FRANZ. 247

was here that he became acquainted with the

works of Handel, Haydn, and Mozart, which felllike the first message of hope into the dark mazeof his unguided ideas, confirming, at the sametime, his resolution of becoming an artisthimself.

Under this influence Franz also ventured upon his

own first creative attempts, without any systematicknowledge of theory; not unlike, in this respect,Wagner and Schumann, who both, about the sametime, and separated by not many miles, weregroping their various ways towards the distant

ideal.A t last the growing love for- ar t in Franz's

bosom overcame his na tural tim idity and the filialaffection to his well-meaning but prejudicedpa ren ts. H e declared his unalterable desire of

continuing his artistic studies under a master ofhis craft, and at last gained an unw illing con-sent from his father. The well-know n composerFrederic Schneider, living at that time in theneighbouring Dessau, was chosen for this purpose,

and to him Franz went full of hope, and thirstingfor knowledge and encouragement.

This hope was to be disappointed. Schneiderwas a dry formalist, without sympathy for



248 ROBERT FRANZ.

inspirations th at could no t be derived from,

or measured by, the strict rules of counterpoint.I t seems that among his own pupils the re existedan opposition pa rty, w ith independent notionsabout the aims of music, and no thing wasmore natural than th at Franz should have joined

this group of dissenting freethinkers, who used tohold secret meetings to exercise the divine art afterthe ir own fashion. U nder the circum stances muchgood could not be expected from Schneider'sins tructio ns ; and when, in 183 7, after an absence

of two years, Franz retu rned to h is father's house,the results of his apprenticeship were not of a kindto reconcile his parents with his choice of vocation.I t is true tha t he had amassed a considerableamount of theoretical knowledge, and could also

show a corresponding heap of " o r i g i n a l " produc-tions, strongly flavoured w ith the dust of th eschoolroom ; but these were not of a kind to satisfyanybody but their author.

The question w hat to do ne xt was approach inguncomfortably near. H is reserved , aristoc raticnature prevented Franz from pushing his own wayby means of drawing-room coteries; on all sides hewas discouraged and repelled; at last he himself



ROBERT FRANZ. 249

began to lose the student's pride which at first had

assisted him in bearing up against the tide of dis-appointm ent. A state of morbid despondency wasth e consequence, in w hich only the in tu itive loveand sympathy of his mother saved him fromperishing.

About this period Franz began the serious studyof the works of Sabastian Bach, and in the samedegree as he entered into the m ysterious dep thsof this grand master, he grew less and less satisfiedw ith his own achievements. H ere he found the

climax of polyphonous art combined with, andmade serviceable to, a breadth of conception to whichthe training of the schoolroom offered no clue. Thevoice of true human feeling spoke to his congenialspirit throug h the din of scholastic wisdom. A t

th e same time th e lyrical passion of Schubert, to-gether with the movement of romanticism pro-claimed by Schumann's compositions and criticalwritings, found an echo in Franz's bosom, imbuinghim with the more rapid and impulsive passion ofmodern art.

The peculiar conditions of his genius are gene-ra lly traced back to the influence of H ande l andB ac h on the one, and Schubert and Schumann on



250 ROBERT FRANZ.

the other side, and it cannot be denied that the im-

pressions received from these four m asters ' w orksduring a stage of transition has been of considerableimportance for his mode of tho ug ht and utterance..But there is distinguishable in his style a somethingwhich cannot be derived from either of the two

elements ju st mentioned, and which, w ith Franzhimself, we are inclined to look for in the oldLuth era n choral which formed " t h e earliest andmost las ting artis tic impression " of his yo uth . Ofthis, more anon.

The process of assimilation of the classic andromantic elements occupied from five to six years.During this time Franz was also deeply interestedin the progressive movement of German philosophy,which at that time found a local centre and an

organ in the celebrated " Hallesche Jah rbiicher,"edited by the staunch H ege lian partisan, ArnoldRug e. A ll this while Franz refrained from artisticproduction, patiently waiting for the moment when,after the processes of fermenting and clearing beingover, " he would have to say a word forhimself."

This time came at last not w ithou t a powerful im-pulse of personal fee ling ; " i t coincided—to quoteLisz t's eloquent words— with a mom ent of deep



ROBERT FRANZ. 251

passion which, in shaking all the fibres of his soul

also moved the strings of poetic inspiration. H eloved with a devotion as it can only bud in a pureand noble na ture . H e dreamt of happiness . . . •its w ing touched him gen tly— then it fled. Th iscatastrophe of his inte rna l fate decided his artistic

m at uri ty ." H is production henceforth was freshand spontaneous, for " he wrote in order to give anou tlet to his overflowing sensations—per sfogarsi."

The first effort of his muse showed a ripeness offeeling and technical skill rarely met with amongst

begin ne rs, bu t easily explained in th is case fromthe composer's self-restraint for so many precedingyears. I know indeed of no artis t's works thegroup ing of which according to time or ma-turity, would present greater difficulties than

th e four hundred songs of Eobert Franz ; we mayeasily discern a considerable variety in the degreeof their intrins ic value according to th e grea ter orlesser happiness of momentary inspiration, but th atprogress through different stages of intellectual

development, of which young artists are, alas, bu ttoo apt to make the public a witness, Franz hashidden entirely from the gazer's eye. H is Opus 1was accordingly treated with great respect by



-252 ROBERT FRANZ.

contemporary critics, and excitedin particular the

admiration of Eo bert Schum ann, who himselfin-troduced the new composer to the readers of his

paper and otherwise assisted him w ithhis usualkindness. Eve r since, his famehas continued in-

creasing gradually but uninterruptedly, and the

acknowledgment of his talent abroadat last obligedeven his fellow citizens to rele nt from their coldreserve towards the prophet in their midst. The

distinctions of organist at one of the parishchurches, and of conductor of the town concerts,

were conferred upon him, and the university offeredhim a chair for music, which he occupies to the

present day.

This is in bare outline the lifeof Eobert Franz;somewhat monotonous and voidof incident, but notwithout signsof mental strife and sorrow,of deeperimport, perhaps,for the growth of lyrical facultiesthan the stirring passionsof the great world. For

who knows the laws after which the sensitive plant" opens its leaves to the light ," or the hidden sourcesfrom which genius drawsits nourishment ? But

let us now look at the flowers which sprang fromthe unbroken evennessof this soil.



ROBERT FRANZ. 25$

3.

Robert Franz was from the beginning consciousof the strictly lyrical nature of his talent, and witha self-criticism rare among artist s, he limited himself

exclusively to his own sphere, w ithout even attem pt-in g a flight into the regions of the more abso luteforms of music. H is works, am oun ting in all toforty-four, consist, with one or two exceptions only,of songs. B ut this self-chosen onesidedness is no t

in his case a sign of limited power. In th enarrow space of th e song he displays w ith morethan ordinary skill the most intricate combinationsof musical art, and even without his editorial labourth e world m igh t recognise in Franz the thorough

stu den t f Bach and H andel by the fine contrapun-ta l tex tu re of his pianoforte accompaniments. In theinstru m ental pa rts of his songs, w ith the strict andindependent guidance of their single voices, we alsosee clearly a s trong influence of the Luth eran choral

which, moreover, the composer himself is ready toacknowledge, and through which he traces hisintimate connection with theVolkslied. It is thisstrictly polyphonous, not to say vocal character of



254 ROBERT FRANZ.

his accompaniments, which distinguishes them

essentially from those of other modern masters, andconnects them w ith the treatm en t of the instrum entsin Bach and Handel.

The remarks on this point made by Franz him-self, are of such interes t and thro w so new a ligh t

on an important side of musical history, that I feelsure the reader will be thankfu l for the followingextracts from one of his letters.

u There is no doubt— Franz w rites— that thebasis of all musical forms is th e vocal and no t the

instrumental style. The human voice existedprevious to all instruments, the latter being indeedonly a mechanical m eans of im ita ting the former.From the beginning of the fourteenth to the end ofthe eighteenth century we perceive an independent

development of the vocal s ty le ; from th at to thepresent day the instrum ental style has been pre-dom inant. The masters of the former period wrotealmost exclusive ly for th e voice, and used the in-struments only for the purpose of accompaniment.Even where Mozart and H ay dn w rite so-calledabsolute * music, the y always remain unde r the

* The word absolute is used by Fra nz as almost synonymouswith instrumental, and must not be taken in the sense as



ROBERT FRANZ. 255

influence of the older sty le, and only in rare

cases ventu re out of th is sphere . Since Beethoventh is has become different. The enormous genius ofth is man, whose chief power lay in his sway overthe instruments, could not allow the existing forms,to limit its inspiration . H e therefore w as eagerly

in tent upon remoulding these forms according tohis own requirem ents. The great pliability of theinstruments considerably assisted this purpose, andit is well know n how, in the course of his colossaldevelopment of the tone-material, Beethoven was led

to the ultimate limits of his power."After a few more remarks on his view of the

formal liberation of music thro ugh Beethoven (w hichview I must ask the reader to compare with what ona former occasion has been said about thespiritual

or poetical liberation of our art by that grea t re-former) Franz proceeds to a sk : " B ut w hat arethe essential points of difference between the vocaland instru m en tal forms of musical expression ?The na tura l limitation of the voice could not b u t

crea te such forms as were in accordance w ith it.M oreover the mechanism of the hum an organ ne-

applied by me throughout, in which sense Mozart and Haydn didindeed write nothing but absolute music.



256 ROBERT FRANZ.

cessitateda sequenceof intervals which presentedno-

serious difficultiesto being perceivedby the ear andrendered by the voice. In this way the so-called" strict (strenge) style " was formed. H ere everynote must, for the mentioned reasons,be the neces-sary complement of both its predecessor and suc-

cessor ; the free choiceof expression being entirelyexcluded, by the strict rules of the style. Thissame regularity moreover applied equally,not onlyto the melody but also to the accompanying parts,barring of course the characteristic modificationsas

required for alto, tenore and basso. The same stylehad, for the sake of conformity to extend even to

the accompanying instruments.

But also in cases where these instru m ents wereused quite independently(as for instance, in Bach'sand Handel's compositionsfor the orchestra, the

organ, and the pianoforte),the " strict style" neverquite relinquished its character; everywherewe

meet the same, or at least similar, phenomenaof

vocal adaptability. One could, for instance, changea number of fugues in the ' "WohltemperirteClavier' into beautifully-sounding choruses, with-out any essential alterations in the parts. Of

Handel, it is known thathe transferred someof hia



ROBERT FRANZ. 257

fugues for the pianoforte into his oratorios, deve-

loping them at the same time into tremendouschoruses.

Beethoven, as I said before, reversedall this fromtop to bottom. The much greater velocityof the

instrumentsand their infallible accuracyin render-

ing every sequence of notes, gradually supplantedthelogical progress of the voices in the sense of the

stric t style . Henceforth, all the single partsmoved with a freedom which, in Beethoven's lastperiod, almost surpassedthe limits of the possible.

The masters following immediatelyin Beet-hoven 's footsteps,viz., Schubert, Chopinand Schu-mann (I except Mendelssohn,who takes an inter-mediate position betweenthe two styles), carriedon the thus created instrumental style,and trans-ferred it as a rule even to specifically vocal pieces,reversing, in this way, exactly the habit of formercenturies; hencethe sometimes justified com plaintsabout the want of adaptability to the voice in the

worksof modern masters.On the other hand, it is utterly comical to hear

modern critics deplorethe way in which Bachand

Handel treated the human voice like an instru-



258 ROBERT FRANZ.

m ent. B u t then, the w orld is turn ed topsy

turvy."*Franz goes on to rela te, how the conditions of

the true vocal style, to which the spirit of modernmusic is thoroughly adverse, were preserved inhis artistic consciousness by means of the early

studies and impressions alluded to in our bio-graphical sketch, and how in consequence the same" strict s t y l e " prevailed to a certain ex ten t inthe accompaniments of his songs, which otherwiseare so thoroughly imbued w ith the unfettered

flow of subjective passion. I t is, indeed, thisvocality (if I may coin the word for my purpose),of th e pianofore parts which, as I said before, givestheir peculiar character to the songs of Franz, andsometimes leads to effects of great poetic beau tyand originality.

4

Notwithstanding the importance of the question

* I must remind the reader that Franz is speaking ofthe voice in a purely musical sense. On the other hand,it is bu t too true tha t these maste rs, like rno^t or all oftheir contemporaries, neglected thepoetical side of thehuman voice as the enunciator of the words, and in this senseoften did treat it like any other instrument.



26o ROBERT FRANZ.

the simplicityof their modulations,an affinity with

the most primitive formsof human feeling, attain-able only in that state of second childlike uncon-sciousness whichis the truest sign of high artisticfaculty.

The songs with wordsby Burns, which forma

not inconsiderable partof Franz's compositions,belong to the same class of popular types. H ere,however, we miss sadly th a t peculiar kin dof

weirdness, which formsthe charm of the old

national tunes to which Burns adapted his

poems. Franzhas rendered, and rendered admir-ably, what is purely lyrical in the Scottish poet,without, as far as I can see, even attemptingto

imitate the national colouring, which,it is t rue, has

to a great extent disappearedin the German trans-

lation. The same applies,and very likely for thesame reason,to Schumann,and many other Germancomposers who were naturally attractedby the

intense singing qualityin Burn's works,so rarelymet within British poets. This want of perceptionis

all the more remarkable amongsta nation which,as arule, is of such easy access to foreign peculiarities , andwhich, moreover, prides itself particularlyon its

unbounded admirationfor the great lyrist. The



ROBERT FRANZ. 261

only German composer who seems, by some process

of intuition, to have caught the musical spirit ofour northern fellow islanders, is Beethoven, inwhose accompaniments to Scotch tun es one isoccasionally struck by a touch of the drawling sad-ness or rhythmical wildness of the genuine bagpipe.

W h a t this affinity consists in, or w here its originmay be found, I am unable to say, seeing th atBeethoven never set foot on British soil. I am onlyspeaking from an undefined impression of my ownexperience.

As another point of resemblance with the spiritof the Yolkslied, we mention in Franz , his p redi-lection for the strophic treatment of his songs.They a re genera lly founded on a melody of g rea tsimplicity, to which he adheres sometimes even

where the altered character of a stanza seems torequire the stronger contrast of a new m otive. B utif, in such cases we occasionally deplore the conces-sion made by the poet to the musician, we cannot, onthe other hand, refuse our highest admiration to the

manner in which Franz, by a slight alteration inmelody or accompaniment, produces the most strik-in g effect of at once musical and poetical beau ty. Inone of his finest songs, calledHerbstsorge (autumn



262 ROBERT FRANZ.

sadness), by Osterwald, the sudden hope of a new

spring is rendered w ith astonishing brightn essbya slight changeof the motive and the introductionof A natural insteadof A flat, into the accompany-ing chord. The same applies to another songof

equal beauty,but of a very different character from

the subdued sadnessof the mentioned autumnalelegy. I am speaking of our composer's settingof

Heine's dreadful words' Ja, du bist elend und ich

grolle nicht, 'in which the sullen despair of disap-pointed love is renderedby the continuous, one. might

almost say obstinate, recurrenceof one short melodi-ous phrase. The effect is one of surprising realism,and almost more forcible tha n the unsuppressed criesof despair which have madethe setting of the com-

panion poem ' I ch grolle nicht ' by Schumann,so

famous. But here, again, we are surprised in

Franz's composition,at the wonderful subtlenessof feeling with whicha short cantabile phrase is

made expressive of the momentary abatementof

angry passion, as the lover mentions the hiddentears of her, whose falseness is the cause of his

misery. The last mentioned songwe also recom-mend to the consideration of those of our master 'sadmirers who have invested him with a kind of



ROBERT FRANZ. 263

pacifying, or, as they call it, " ethic " tendency , in

contrast to the melancholy hopelessness of Schu-bert, and the undisguised Byronism of Schumann.I must confess th a t I have looked in va in for th isfeature. Such works as the setting of the ut ter lydesperate words by Heine, l Verfehltes Leben,

verfehlte Liebe,' show but too well, how deeplyFranz is imbued w ith the pessimistic spirit of ourlatter days, although, perhaps, he does not alwaysutter it with the intensity of the two first mentionedcomposers. I t is indeed, th is common atmo-

sphere of modern tho ug ht and passion which linksthese three men together, and has given rise to thehackneyed notion of their trium virate on the Par-nassus of German song. Such an arb itary com-bination is, indeed, quite as uncalled for as the

careful measuring by the yard of their comparativem erits. I t is undeniable that all of them have cer-ta in pecu liarities of the ir own, as Schubert hismelody and dram atic force, Schum ann his intensityof pointed effects, or Franz his subtelty of psycho-

logical detail in which they are superior to theothers ; bu t to extol these m erits of the one w ith aview to disparaging his rivals, is a sign of partisan-ship of the blackest dye. The only answer to such



264 ROBERT FRANZ.

barren haggling is the slightly modified phraseof

Goethe, " that people oughtto be glad to have threesuch big fellows:" perhapswe shall even have to

add a fourth one to the number.The independence of our composer's genius,

is shown indirectly by the fact tha t, wherever

he does imitate unconsciously(as his situation ofa beginner with the admired examples of per-

fectly developed masters beforehim, made it almostimpossible to avoid), he at once gives signsof

flagging inspirationand literally ceases to be him-

self. This applies especiallyto such cases whereFranz chooses words which have previously beenset by other masters, without being ableto justifythis pleonasm by a new musical light thrownon

the subject. His setting, for instance, of Heine's

" Leise zieht durch mein Gem iith,''is conceivedin exactly the same spirit as the charming musicto the same words by Mendelssohn,and, thereforeseems to lack every raison d'etre. In such casespriority ought to decide, or, at least, the perfecttranslation of a poem into the musical languageought to prevent a second attempt in the samedirection, unless, as we said before, this secondattempt starts froman essentially different basis.



ROBERT FRANZ. 265

Another danger by which the finest intentions

of Franz have, in a few cases, been frustrated, isconnected w ith the choice of his words. Sometimesthis happens through a want ofrapport betweenpoet and composer; the extreme conciseness anddrastic pointedness of some of H ein e's shorter poems,

for instance, seems occasionally to have preventedthe beautiful broadness of Franz'smelos from show-ing to its greatest advantage . In such cases wemiss the more forcible, but (to use a common expres-sion,) also more short-winded impressivenesss of

Schumann's utterance.At other times Franz has composed words in

which the want of real feeling is only imperfectlyhidden by an acquired smoothness of diction. Inconsequence the inspiration of the composer begins

at once to flag, like the sails of a vessel when thebrea th of heaven ceases to blow. I t is, indeed,always with some apprehension that we see thenam e of a minor poet on the title page of one ofFran z's songs, excepting only th at of "W. Oster-

wald, whose tenderness and truth of feeling makeup fully for what he wants in originality of thoughtand expression.

B ut, as I said before, it is just in this sym-



266 ROBERT FRANZ.

pathetic dependenceon the assistance of the words,

that the poetical nature of our composer's talentis shown; we may call this, indeed,one of thoseamiable weaknesses which makeus only the moreprone to love and admire the t ruly great and admi-rable qualitiesof his muse.

Nowhere does this muse appear more loveablethan where she is matched in the bonds of poetrywith the noble and elevated, though melancholy,genius of Xicolaus Lcnau. The rich gifts and

tragic fate of this great poet w ould alone filla

volume. Be it said here that amongst Germanlyrists he takes his place immediately after Heine,to whom he is inferior in range of subject and verve

of utterance,but whom he surpasses in purity of

feeling. It is in his setting of Lenau's ScJiilflieder

that we must recognise the most sustained effortof Franz, and we can, indeed, not find a betterdescription of his muse—as she looks at us out

of her large and quiet, but inexpressibly sad

eye3,—than in the following linesof Lenau, which,clad in the beauty of Franz's melody, may be

considered as at once the symbol and the t r iumphof his art :



FRANZ LISZ2. 267

Eest on me thou eye of darkness,Wield thy undivided might;Mildly earnest, tender, dreamy.Fathomlessly darkest night.

With thy dark, thy magic shadow,Hide away this world from me,Only thou, above my being,Biding everlastingly.

5.

There is no greater contrast imaginable than thatbetween the quiet changeless life of Robert Franz

in a small German town, and the brilliant career ofFranz Liszt, the spoiled favourite of Europe, to whichwe have now to give a passing g lance. After themany disappointments and miseries, through whichwe had to go with the men of genius who form the

subjects of the preceding chapters, we feel almostrelieved in turning, at the end of our journey,towards the sunniest regions of fortune and suc-cess. If ever the gods can be said to have showeredtheir riches t gifts w ithout reserve or drawback on

the cradle of a single mortal, this cradle must have"been tha t in which F ranz Lisztwas, let us hope, dulydeposited at Raiding, a small Hungarian village,on the day of his birth, the 22nd October, 1811.



268 FRANZ LISZ1.

From his first appearance in pub lic, th e fiftieth

anniversary of which has been ju s t ce lebrated a tPe sth, his genius was acknowledged w ith an en-thusiasm in which the whole musical republic,from Beethoven down to the obscurest dilettan te,joined unanimously. The histo ry of music know s

of no success approaching the unprecedented andstill unequalled applause with which the pheno-menal achievements of the young pianoforte herowere received by enthusiastic audiences fromM adrid to St. Pete rsb urg. A nd the same success

accompanied him in everything he undertook inlife. W hen tired of th e shallow fame of th evirtuoso, he exchanged th e honours of the p ianistfor the thorny career of the composer, he had, it istrue, at first to suffer from the obstacles with which

popular indifference and professional ill-will triedto impede his prog res s; bu t these impedim entswere soon overcome by his dauntless energy, andLiszt is at the presen t tim e livin g to see his worksexpanding daily in the public admiration of his

contem poraries. Also as a conductor he addedfresh laurels to his wreath.

But, better than all this, nature has endowedhim with a true and genial heart, full to over-



FRANZ LISZT. 269

flowing with sympathy for the joys and sufferings

of others, and alien to any feeling of selfishness andenvy . So we need not wonder at seeing tha t, tocrown his happiness, the friendship of man and thelove of wom an were never absent from his courseof life.

It would be impossible to condense an ever soshort account of a career, so rich in importan tand in teresting even ts, into the frame of a singlech ap te r; we will fix only upon one circumstance,as at once important for the h istory of music andillus-

trative of the noble generosity of Liszt's nature, hisfriendship w ith W agner. I n thin king of the manytemptations to mutual animosities and misunder-standings, to which the minds of two men living inthe brightest light of public fame are exposed, one

is struck with agreeable wonder at the ungrudginglove and admiration between Wagner and Liszt,which finds its prototype and equal only in Schiller'sand Goethe's friendship. The thought of riva lryseems never to have entered their minds, although

the zeal of enthusiastic partisans can never havebeen absent, to fan the slightest spark of an ungra-cious feeling into a flame. B ut for more thantwenty years both Liszt and Wagner have worked



270 FRANZ LISZT.

for the same purpose of artistic reform in their

individual spheres, and not once has the source ofpurest friendship been tain ted by a drop of bitte r-ness. For an account of the origin and circum-stances of this friendship we borrow the eloquentwords of Wagner himself.

The following sketch, w ritten in 1851 , takes usback to the time when, after the revolution of 1849,"Wagner, as the reader will recollect, had to fly theco un try , and in th is way was cut off from allartistic rapport w ith his friends at home. "A ga in"—

W ag ne r say s— " I w as thoroughly disheartenedfrom un dertak ing any new artistic scheme. Onlyrecen tly I had had proofs of the im possibility ofm aking my art intelligible to the public, and allthis disgusted me with the beginning of new

dramatic works. Indeed, I thou gh t that every-thing was at an end with my artistic creativeness.Prom this state of mental dejection I was raised bya friend. By most evident and undeniable proofshe made me feel that I was not deserted, but, onthe contrary, understood deeply by those evenwho were otherwise most distant from m e ; inthis way he gave me back my full artistic con-sciousness.



FRANZ LISZT. 271

"T h is wonderful friend has been to meFranz Liszt.

I m ust enter a little more deeply upon the characterof this friendship, which to many has seemed para-doxical. Indeed, I have been compelled to appearrepellen t and hostile on so many sides, tha t I almostfeel a want of communication about this our sym-

pathetic union." I met Liszt for the first time during my earliest

stay in Paris, and at a period when I had renouncedthe hope, nay, even the wish, of a Paris reputation,and, indeed, was in a state of internal revolt against

th e artistic life I found the re . A t our meetingLiszt appeared to me as the most perfect contrastof my own being and situation. In this world,into which it had been my desire to fly from mynarrow circumstances, Liszt had grown up, from

his earliest age, so as to be the object of generallove and admiration, at a time when I was repulsed

by general coldness and want of sympathyIn consequence I looked upon him with suspicion.I had no opportunity of disclosing my being and

working to him, and, therefore, the reception I metw ith on his pa rt was a ltogether of a superficial kind,as was indeed quite natural in a man to whom every-day the most divergen t impressions claimed access.



572 FRANZ LISZT.

But I was not in a mood to look with unprejudiced

eyes for the natural cause of his behaviour, which,friendly and obliging initself, could not bu t hu rt m ein that state of my mind. I never repeated m y firstcall on Liszt, and without knowing or evenwishing to know him I was prone to look upon

him as strange and adverse to my nature." M y repeated expression of th is feeling was

afterwards told to Liszt, just at the time when myRieuzi at Dresden attracted general attention. H ewas surprised to find himself misunderstood with

such violence by a man whom he had scarcelyknow n, and whose acquaintance now seemednot w ithou t value to him . I am still touched atrecollecting the repeated and eager attempts hemade to change my opinion about him, even before

he knew any of m y works. H e acted not fromany artistic sym pathy , bu t led by the purelyhum an wish of discon tinuing a casual disharmonybetween himself and another being; perhaps he alsofelt an infinitely tender m isgiv ing of havin g really

hu rt me unconsciously. H e who knows theregardless selfishness and dreadful insensibilityin our social life, and especially in the relations ofmodern artists to each other, cannot but be



FRANZ LISZT. 273

struck with wonder, nay, delight, by the treatment

I experienced from this ex traordinary man. . . .Liszt soon afterwards witnessed a performance ofMienzi at Dresden, on which he had almost toinsist: and after that I heard from all the differentcorners of the world, where he had been on his

artistic excursions, how he had everywhere ex-pressed his deligh t w ith my music, and, indeed ,had — I would rath er believe — uninten tionallycanvassed people's opinions in my favour. Thishappened at a time when it became more and more

evident that my dramatic works would have nooutw ard success. B ut ju st when the case seemeddesperate, Liszt succeeded by his own energy inopening a hopeful refuge to my art.

" H e ceased his wanderings, settled down at the

small, modest Weimar, and took up the conductor'sbaton, after having been at home so long in thesplendour of the greatest cities of Europe . A t"Weimar I saw him for the last time, when I resteda few days in Thuringia, not yet certain whether

the threatening prosecution would compel me tocontinue m y flight from Germ any. The ve ry dayw hen m y personal danger became a certainty, isaw Liszt conducting a rehearsal of myTannhduser,

T



274 FRANZ LISZT.

and was astonished at recognising my second self in

his achievement. W h a t I had felt in inven ting thismusic, he felt in performing i t : w hat I w anted toexpress in w riting it down, he said in m aking itsound. Strange to say, th roug h th e love of thisrarest friend I gained, at the moment of becoming

homeless, a real home for my art, which I hadlonged for and sought for always in the wrongplace

" A t the end of my last stay at Par is, when ill,miserable, and despairing, I sat brooding over my

fate, my eye fell on the score of myLohengrin,totally forgotten by m e. Suddenly I felt somethinglike compassion, that this music should never soundfrom off the death-pale paper. Two words I wroteto L iszt ; his answer w as, the new s tha t preparations

for the performance were being made on the largestscale tha t the limited means of W eim ar w ould perm it.Eve rythin g tha t men and circumstances could do,was done, in order to m ake the work understood.

. . . Errors and misconceptions impeded

the desired success. W hat was to be done tosupply what was w anted , so as to further the trueunderstand ing on all sides, and w ith it the u lt i-mate success of th e work ? Liszt saw it at once,



FRANZ LISZT. 275

and did it. H e gave to the public his own im-

pression of the w ork in a m anner, the convincingeloquence and overpowering efficacy of whichrem ain unequalled. Success was his reward, andw ith this success he now approaches m e, sa y in g :1 Behold we have come so far, now create us a

new work, that we may go still further.' "Besides Lohengrin and Tannhduser, also theFlying

Dutchman was successfully performed under Liszt'sdirection. B ut his noble zeal was not limited to thereproduction of the works of one man, however

grea t tha t man m ight be. W he n, in 1848, Lisztclosed his career as a virtuoso, and accepted apermanent engagement as conductor of the CourtT he atre a t W eimar, he did so w ith the distinctpurpose of becoming the advocate of the rising

musical generation, by the performance of suchworks as were written regardless of immediatesuccess, and , therefore, w ithout h im would havestood little chance of ever seeing the light of th estag e. In short intervals eleven operas of living

composers were either performed for the firsttim e or revived on the W eimar stage. Am ongstthese we count such works asBenvenuto Celliniby Berlioz, Schumann'sGenevieve, and the same

T 2



276 FRANZ LISZT.

m aster's music to B yro n's ' M anfred.' Schub ert's

Alfonso and Estrella was also rescued from oblivionby Liszt's exertions.

For a time it seemed as if the small city inThuringia was once more going to be th e artisticcentre of Germ any , as it had been in the days of

Goethe, Schiller, and H erd er. Fro m all sidesmusicians and amateurs flocked to Weimar, towitness the astonishing feats to which a small bu texcellent community of singers and instrumentalistswere inspired by the genius of their leader. In

this way was formed the nucleus of a group ofyoung musicians, full of talent and enthusiasm, andinspired by the noble exam ple of Liszt, to spread anew evangel of supreme devotion to music and itspoetical aims all over the world. I t was, indeed,

in those gatherings at W eim ar tha t the musicianswho now form th e so-called School of the Futu re ,till then unknown to each other and divided locallyand mentally, came first to a clear understanding ofthe ir powers and aspirations. I t need not be added

how much the personal fascination of Liszt con-tributed to this desired effect. Am ongst thenum erous pupils on the pianoforte to whom heat the same period opened the invaluable treasure



FRANZ LISZT. 277

of his technical experience, we only mention Hans

von Biilow, the worthy disciple of such a master.

6.

But, in a still higher sense, the soil of Weimar,with its great traditions, was to prove a field of

richest harvest. W he n, in 1842, Liszt undertookthe direction of a certain number of concerts everyyear at Weimar, his friend Duverger wrote theprophetic words, " Cette place qui oblige Liszt asejourner trois mois de l'annee a Weimar, doit mar-

quer peut-etre pour lui la transition de sa carrierede virtuose a celle de com positeur." The tru th ofthis presage has since been proved by a long,bri lliant list of compositions in different spheres ofmusical art, too long, indeed, and too brilliant to

allow of an adequate survey of their number andmerits within the limits of our present task.

Am ongst the pu res t fruits of his creative labourw e count his songs, to which we now will dedicatethe few closing remarks of this work.

In Eobert Franz we observed, combined with thedesire of a poetically free expression, a strongreverential feeling for the abstract sacredness of themusical form, as shown in the strophic treatment of



278 FRANZ LISZT.

his songs. Lisz t, on the contra ry, has entirely-

freed himself from this awe; he is a poet, andnothing bu t a poet. H is music, heard w ithout theinterpretation of the words, would in most casesseem an incoherent sequence of beautiful melodioussnatches, interrupted by declamatory passages, and

only connected by an indefinable continuance ofsentiment which occasionally takes the form ofwhat I have on a former occasion described as the" leading m otive." The laws of tonality are con-tinually violated by the abrupt introduction of the

most divergent keys, and occasionally the metricalstructure of the poem itself is obscured by thecomposer's dramatic vivacity. H er e we havereached at last the consistent carry ing out of thepoetic principle in lyrical music to its final conse-

quences.The old dilemma between music and poetry and

the ir mutual righ ts and duties rises once more beforeour eyes, but in a form which does not allow of theunconditional solution which we saw achieved inW ag ne r's music-draina. I n the opera the forms ofabsolute music were a distinct encroachment on thedomain of poe try, themselves founded on an un-na tura l basis, and therefore doomed to des truction



FRANZ LISZT. 279

from the beg inn ing . B ut this is widely different

in the Song. H ere absolute music is represented byth e tune, which, as we see in the Volkslied, is in-spired only by th e first stanza and afterwards repeated,regardless of changes in the sentiment of the words'sung to it. The strict adherence to this principle

in the artis tic song is impossible, except in casesw here either an imitation of the popular song isintended, or where the change in the emotionalimport of each single stanza is so slight as to makethe same tune appear the most appropriate mode of

expression for all of them . In all other cases thisfirst melody must be abandoned and changed foranother melodious or declamatory motive, accordingto the more or less lyrical or dram atic character ofthe words.

Still it cannot be denied that the absolute tune isclosely connected w ith the original struc ture of thesong, and th at in abandon ing it entirely for thefreer expression of changing passion, the composerru ns the risk of losing that principle of un ity and

consistent development of the musical part, withoutw hich th e enjoyment of ev ery work of art becomesimpossible. I t is true tha t this feeling of un ity canto a great extent be supplied by the accompaniment,



280 FRANZ LISZT.

but it remains equally true that a great danger for

the growth of modern song consists in the tooindependent treatment of the vocal part in the singlestanzas, by which not only the musical beauty butalso the rhy thm ical organism of the poem may beseriously injured. Even W ag ne r seems to acknow-

ledge the existence of such a danger, and has inconsequence trea ted the Song (wherever he intro-duces it into his dramatic w orks) much m ore on theabsolutely musical principle than might be expectedfrom him.

Franz Liszt's place is, to borrow a term from politi-cal life, on the extreme left, his princ iple be ing u n-limited freedom with regard to both the melodiousand rhythm ical structu re of his songs. I t is trueth at some of his greatest effects he has achieved bypurely melodious means, as, for instance, in thatbeautiful song " Es muss ein Wunderbares sein, "which does not essentially differ from what we havedescribed as the " through-com posed " song, or in hissetting of " Du bist wie eine Blum e, " where therecurrence of the first motive in the concludingbars of the vocal par t is of sweetest suggestiveness.A t other times a greater liberty in the rhy thm icalphrasing of the music is warranted by the metre of



FRANZ LISZT. 281

the poem itself, as, for instance, in Goethe's wonder-

ful nigh tsong " Uber alien Gipseln ist K u h ' " theheavenly calm of which Liszt has rendered by hiswonderful harmonies in a manner which alone wouldsecure him a place amongst the grea t m asters ofGerm an song. Pa rticu larly , the modulation from

G major back into the original E major at the closeof the piece is of surprising beauty.

At other times however it cannot be denied thatthe extreme freedom of Liszt's rhythmical treatmenthas seriously injured the effect of his songs. The

character, for instance, of Heine's popular words," Ic h weiss nich t was soil es bedeuten " is of toosimple a kin d to allow of the elaborate pa intin g ofdetails, and the introduction of new motives, as wefind it in Liszt's otherwise beautiful and expressive

music. I confess that the simple tun e b y Silcher,to which the Germans are used to chant thesemelancholy words (it is alleged at moments whenthey feel pa rticu larly jolly ), seems to me moreappropriate under the circumstances than our com-

po ser's am bitious effort. If I m igh t ventu re a boldguess, I would say tha t this song, as well as th esetting of Goethe's " King in Thule," were writtenat a time when Liszt was not yet quite free from



282 FRANZ LISZT.

the influence of the French salon, of the atmosphere

of which, with its fashionable Bomance they bothremind one occasionally. The music to the lastmentioned poem, I would further guess, musthave been w ritten originallyfor a French transla-tion, for in the German versionthe declamationis

faulty throughout.*The same influenceis traceable, but here with

most beneficial effects,in Listz's compositionsof

some of Yictor H ug o's songs. Particularlythe

charming setting of "Comment disaient- i ls"dis-

plays the elegant graceof French spiritin its mostfavourable light,and is indeed a jewel of its kind.

In order to make the characteristic featuresof

Listz's style quite plain,I think it will be best to

compare one of his songs with the setting of the

same words by another composer, which parallelwill at the same time serveto show the varietyof

musical interpretationsto which a single poemmay

give rise, according tothe individualitiesof differentmasters. I have for th is purpose chosen H ein e'scharming song." Im E h e i n " etc., which has been

* The reader must also remember tha t Lisztis Hungarianby birth and French by education,and that Germanis to himan acquired language.



FRANZ LISZT. 283

set by both Eobert Franz and Liszt, in a

manner which in itself may be called absolutelybeautiful, and the comparative yalue of which ineach case it is far from my purpose to discuss.

I first subjoin an exact prose translation of thewords, so as not to lose the slightest turn of senti-

ment or expression by an attempt at a metricalrendering.

In the Rhine, the beautiful stream,There is mirrored in the waves,"With its great cathedral,The great holy Cologne.

In the cathedral there is a picture,Painted on golden leather;Into the wilderness of my heart,It has thrown its friendly rays.

There are playing many roses and angels,Round our fair lady ;The eyes, the lips, the cheeks,Resemble those of my love.

The emotional basis of this little lyric is a feelingof quiet, almost dreamy religiousness, as it may be-seem a lover who, walking in the lofty aisles of acathedral, sees the image of his beloved in thesweet countenance of every angel. This keynote



284 FRANZ LISZT.

Fran z has rendered most adm irably in the simple

notes of a beautiful melody, and th e same feeling hesustains essentially unchanged from first to last.I t is tru e tha t he emphasises the gra nd eur of thecathedral by a mezzoforte, and that on our entrance

into the holy precinct we hear in th e accompani-

ment something like the solemn chords of an organ,but upon the whole the flow of the melody remainsun interrup ted by attemp ts at rendering single pointsof dramatic import. W hen at last th e lover seesthe resemblance between the virg in and his own

heart's idol, his voice sinks into a whispered pian-issimo, almost as if, struck w ith his discovery, hehesitated in giving utterance to his worldly longing.The whole piece bears the character of a sweet oldlegend, w ithout a vestige of modern restlessness and

passion.Liszt opens his song with an introduction

of four bars . A melodious phrase, ris ing andfalling alternately suggests the festive ringin gof a peal of bells, while the incessant roll of accom-panying triplets renders w ith striking tru th thesplashing waves of a wide river. The vista of thegrea t city by the majestic Bhine rises before oureyes, even before the voice begins to pronounce the



FRANZ LISZT. 285

first lines of the poem, always accompanied by the

same expressive m otive. A t first the vocal partbears the quie t character of a na rrativ e, till, at them entioning of the holy city, th e grandeur of theimpression is illustrated bya, forte passage of greatdramatic effectiveness. The second stanza is a

stric t repetition of the first, both in harm onyand melody, t i l l the word "wilderness", whichcauses a change of modulation into minor keys tillthe words " friendly r a y s " , at which the harmonysuddenly emerges into a strain of brightest joy.

At this point the pictorial motive in the accompani-m ent ceases, because of th e heightened emotion,in which th e impressions of the senses are no morenoticed. I t is in such touches of finest psycho-logical observation, that Liszt's mastership appears

in its most brilliant light.The two following lines have given rise to a

short effusion of intense religious beauty. Thebroken chords of the accompaniment seem to playrou nd the voice, like the roses and angels in the won-

derful old picture of the Cologne cathedral, of whichth e words speak. The last two lines are treated qu itein the declamatory style, passing quickly by theear like an enchan ting, but, alas, too fugitive



286 FRANZ LISZT.

vision of delight. They are, however, repeated

in broken utterances,as if the mind once more triedto recall the sweet message fromthe other world.B ut at the same time the sounds of the bells and of

the rushing riverare again heard in the accompani-ment, and these carryus back into the sphere of the

tangible world, tillat last, with the softer and softerpianissimoof the chords, the whole scene wanes intorosy distance, likethe glow of the setting sun.

Such is the character of Liszt's musical concep-tion. We have pointed out before, the danger to

which the beautiful flowof the melody is subjectedby the frequent intrusionof purely poetical effects.But, on the other hand, the perfect blendingof the

two arts strikesthe hearer with a feeling of beautyand harmony of a higher order, because it arises

from the mutual surrender of two divergent elementsin one common effort. In works like this, Liszthas brought the efficiency of music for poeticalpur-

poses to a pitch formerly unknownin lyricalcom-

positions ; in adding, moreover, that this musicis,

absolutely speaking,of great intrinsic beauty, I

think I have said sufficientto show, that in the

hands of a master artistic songis capable of vyingsuccessfully withthe other forms of musical art in

their most advanced stagesof progress.



APPENDIX.



2 8 9

APPENDIX I.

THE following is an account of th e festival a t Bayreuth on theoccasion of the foundation-stone of the "Wagner Theatre beinglaid. I t has been thought worth inserting here, as bearing ingeneral upon the subject of this book, and still more, asexhibiting the vivid impression which the wonderful conduct-ing of "Wagner made on all those present.

Bayreuth, May 22nd, 1872.

IT is now scarcely ten years ago since "Wagner, in thepreface to his dram atic version of th eNibelungen Saga,first hin ted a t th e possibility of hav ing his great work

performed by the voluntary assistance of the friendsof his ar t. The chances of such an enterprise wereat that time the most unfavourable that could beimagined. A lthough the success of W ag ne r's firstfour operas, wherever they had been adequately

performed, was an undeniable fact, still his moreadvanced ideas of the fundamental reorganisation ofthe music-drama had found so little responsivesympathy amongst the German nation—if such a

u



29 o APPENDIX.

nation could be said to exist at all—that the utter

derision with which his appeal was received by thehostile press seemed but too well justified.

Amongst the causes which have removed allthese obstacles and have now assembled a crowd ofenthusiastic admirers at Bayrcuth, I would mention

—besides the irresistible power of his genius asrealised in the successive works of Wagner—thegreat political events of the last two years, inwhich the various German tribes, so long dividedby internal animosities and pa rty struggles, have

at last recovered the feeling of solidarity. For aphilosophic people like the Germans, there soonarose the necessity for sym bolising the newly re-covered political unity in a work of artistic import;and it was therefore only na tura l to see the best

amongst the nation turn towards the purest sourcesof old Teutonic inspiration, as Wagner has em-bodied them in his grand dram atic work. Themaster's call therefore for the means necessary tosecure a worthy performance of his M be lung en

drama, was responded to with a most promisingwillingness ; and it was the lay ing of the founda-tion-stone of a theatre to be erected for the purpose,tha t had assembled the friends of W agner from allparts of the world.



292 APPENDIX.

and the conditions of which are in themselves by

far superior to the demands of music in its inde-penden t existence. The rules arising out of thesedemands are in the Ninth Symphony violated,nay, completely overthrown, with a freedom ofpurpose and grandeur of conception that can be

explained only from Beethoven 's fundam ental idea,as it gradually rises to self-consciousness in thewords of Schiller's ode ' An die Freude.'

In his celebrated programme to the N in th Sym-phony, which "Wagner wrote five-and-twenty years

ago, he has interpreted Beethoven's poetical inten-tions by illustrative quotations from G oethe'sl Faust, 'connecting in this way the two greatest works thatGerman gen ius ever conceived. H e there declaresthis symphony to be the struggle of the human

heart for happiness. In the first movement th islonging for joy is opposed and overshadowed by theblack wings of despondency. In the plaintivenotes of the orchestra we hear the sad burden ofFaust's words :

" Entbehren sollst Du, sollst entbehren."

The second movement, on the other hand, with itsquick and striking rhythmical formation, describes



APPENDIX. 293

that wild mirth of despair which seeks respite and

nepenthe in the waves of physical enjoyment. Thetrio again m igh t be considered as a dramatic render-in g of the village scene in ' Fau st. ' The adagio,w ith its sweet pu re harmonies, appears after thislike a dim recollection of former happiness and

innocence—

" So sad, so strange the days that are no more."

I n the fourth movement at last Beethoven leavesth e limits of his own art en tirely. The repe tition

of the m ain motives of the foregoing movem ents,always interrupted by the tremendous recitative ofthe double basses, is absolutely unexplainable froma pu rely musical point of view. I t is the highesteffort of dramatic characterisation, instrumental

music has ever made, and seeing that it has reachedthe limits of its own proper power, it has to callth e sister ar t of worded poetry to it said. Beet-hoven has done this in a way " in which," to speakw ith W agner, " w e do not know whether to ad-

mire more the master's bold inspiration or simplenaivete P To the grand choral piece which follows,the words of Schiller's ode form the best comment.

It is obvious how the introduction in this way of



294 APPENDIX.

words as the necessary complement of musical ex-

pression even at its climax of perfection becamethe stepping-stone to the further development ofpoetical music, as we discern it in what is generallycalled the " music of the fu ture ." I t is equallyclear that it requires more than the common intel-

lect of the general run of conductors to grapplewith the intellectual (not to speak of the musical)difficulties of such a work . Hence there is scarcelyanother composition in existence , which has beeninjured so much by the traditional rou tine of

musical Philis tinism . I candidly confess tha t,although I have heard the N in th Symphony at leastthree score and ten times, I never quite understoodits wonderfully grand and harmonious structuretill to-day . "Wagner indeed seems th e born inter-

preter of this monum ental work of musical gen ius.W ith a marvellous power of congenial receptivity,he conceives the grand intentions of his masterBeethoven, and moreover he is in a most eminentdegree a conductor.

It is difficult to say what are the mysteriousconditions of musical leadership ; they are certainlynearest akin to the qualities of a great militarycommander ; and one can only agree with good old



APPENDIX. 295

Emperor William, who, himself entirely innocent

of musical knowledge, said after Wagner's lateperformance of Beethoven's C Minor Symphony, atBerlin, in his homely w ay : " Now you see what agood general can do with his army."

It is indeed one of the most interesting sights,

to see the immediate rapport established betweenWagner and his orchestra as soon as he raises hisbaton. Each ind ividua l member, from the firstviolinist to the last drummer, is equally under theinfluence of a personal fascination, which seems to

have much in common with the effects of animalmagnetism. Ev ery eye is turned towards them aste r; and it appears as if the musicians derivedthe notes they play not from the books on the irdesks, but from Wagner's glances and movements.

I remember reading in Heine a description ofPaganini's playing the violin, and how every onein the audience felt as if the virtuoso was lookingat, and performing for him or he r individually. Agun aimed in the direction of many different per-

sons is said to produce a similar illusory effect;and several artists in Wagner's orchestra andchorus assured me that they felt the fascinatingspell of the conductor's eye, looking at them during



296 APPENDIX.

the whole performance. "Wagner in common life is

of a rather reserved and extremely gentlemanly de-portment ; but as soon as he faces his band a kindof demon seems to take possession of him. He

storms, hisses, stamps his foot on the ground and

performs the most wonderful gyratory movements

with his a r m s ; and woe to the wretch who woundshis keen ear with a false note. At other times, whenthe musical waves run smoothly, Wagner ceasesalmost entirely to beat the time, and a most winningsmile is the doubly appreciated reward of his mu-

sicians, for a particularly well-executed passage.In brief, Wagner is as great a virtuoso on the

orchestra as Liszt on the pianoforte, or Joachim on

the violin, etc.



297

APPENDIX II.

LETTERS OF EOBEET SCHUMANN.

THE subjoined are a series of lette rs by EobertSchumann, written between 1835 and 1844, to

H err A nton von Zuccalmaglio, one of the mostdevo ted contribu tors of the ' Neue Zeitschrift furMusik,' living at that time in the house of PrinceGortschakoff, at W arsaw . The MSS. are in mypossession, and have been published in the ' Aca-

dem y.' They afford valuab le material for thegrea t composer's life and literary career and willgain in interest if read in connection w ith the bio-graphical facts related in the third chapter. Forthis reason it has been thought desirable to rescue

them from the comparative obscurity in the columnsof a jou rna l. As to their literary merits, it mustbe confessed that , compared to the letters ofMendelssohn, they seem deficient in expression and



298 APPENDIX.

void of those lively touches which have made the

latter almost as popular as their author's composi-tions. But it ought to be borne in mind thatSchumann's reserved nature was wont to discoverits higher aims and deeper feelings rarely, and onlyto those nearest to him.

( i )

[Dictated.']

"Leipzig, 11th August 1835.

" Dear Sir,—It was not till some weeks ago that

we received your MSS., and are delighted to findthat our young institution [the ' Neue Zeitschriffc']has found an echo in the far North.

" The letter you contributed is a capital parodyof certain epistles in German newspapers. Tour

"Wedel, * the village sexton, is an excellent idea,and admirably adapted for our journal. Both thepapers will shortly be printed. As to the printingof your poems, I hope you will have a little pa-tience, as we have arrears which will take half a

year to clear off." W on 't it be possible for you to send your

communications by a shorter route ? W ith many

* One of Zuccalmaglios pseudonyms.



APPENDIX. 299

thanks for your kind interest and hoping to receive

other contributions," Yours faithfully

" The Editor," E. SCHUMANN."

Schumann adds a note in his own han dw riting:—

" Y ou r second lette r of A ug us t 5th has th ismoment arrived . This goes by post in order to setyour mind at rest about your excellent papers ; theanswer to your second will follow in the bookseller'sparce l in a few day s. One or the other will, I

hope, reach you. In any case, favour us soon withsom ething new . If you like our musical paper,you will greatly oblige me by mentioning it

occasionally."K. SCHUMANN."

(2)" Dear Sir,—First of all my best thanks for your

new contribution . There is something in you rarticles which pleases me, but for which I cannotyet find the right name, unless it be the quiet way

in which you dive down to the deepest places ofthe soul, and the clear exposition you give of whatyou have seen when you reappear on the surface.Continue to delight us by going on.



300 APPENDIX.

" Y our capital proposal to supply a new tex t to

Mozart's operas I quite agree with; but I have mydoubts w hether you will be able to carry it throug h."We know what publishers are, no t to speak ofmanagers, and especially the public, when theyhave once taken an idea into their heads ; however,

tr y it. A s far as I am concerned, I am quite atyour service, so long as I have no thing to do withthe commercial side of the question, of which I amsupremely ignorant. H ave the kindness to letme know more of your plan, w he ther it includes

any structural alteration in the plot, or onlya text better adapted to the score, and so forth,in order that I may consult a publisher here aboutit.

" There is another thing which is rather on my

mind. You know how difficult every un de rtakin g isat the beginn ing. Our new journal meets w ith anunusual amount of sym pathy ; bu t ye t I am workingalmost entirely w ithou t pay . If you are not com-pelled to live by your pen , clever, excellent as it

is, I hope you w on 't mind w aiting a little whilelonger for the usualhonoraire. But,if this is to bea bar to your sending us further contributions, con-sider th e previous sentence cancelled. I accept all



APPENDIX. 301

yo ur conditions. On this poin t please send me

your decision at once." Yours truly,

" E . SCHUMANN.

" Leipzig, 28/9, '35."

(3)" December 17th, '35.

" Dear S ir,— Tw o th ings ve ry different from oneanother have prevented my answ ering you r letterbefore ; I hav e been travelling , and I have been

ill." First of all, about the publication of your manu-

scripts, a m atte r in which I take the warmestintere st. I have knocked once and again at thepu bl ish ers ' doors for you . I t is hard enough for

principa ls to get any tolerable term s out of book-sellers , let alone th ird pa rties . At last I foundth a t the trees had prevented me from seeing th ewood. M y bro the rs are booksellers, and a firm,I th ink I m ay say, of good s tand ing (Schum ann

brothers, at Zwickau), and they will be happy totake your metamorphosis of the text to Mozart, butonly on condition that you share th e loss as wellas th e profit. This, although I represented to



3o2 APPENDIX.

them the inconvenience of such an arrangement.

N ow, you must decide, please. You can dependupon everything being above board, and upon theirpunctuality, whether you have a yearly or a shorteraccount w ith them . I t w ill be be tter for you toapply direct to th e house at Zw ickau, in order to

arrive at something definite." Y our essays and let ter I have . All excellent.

W ede l has been declared member of the Davidsbund,whether you like it or not. W aldb ruh l seems tome too obvious a pseudonym, so I have changed it

to "W. B ri ih l; you will forgive me. If you readour jou rna l regu larly (I hope you do, bu t should beglad to know for certain), you will stand some chanceof improving your aquaintance w ith the D avids-biindler.

" We shall be glad of innumerable pages out ofW .'s diary . If I can be of use in any other way,I am at your service. Do you know anyth ing ofthe editor of the 'Yo lks liede r' (along w ith Baum-stark, of Heidelberg) ? Can you g ive me the

names of some peoplewith a turn for poetry, whocould contribute to the journal ?

"Yours very t ru ly,

" R. SCHUM ANN ."



APPENDIX. 303

" Leipzig, Good Friday, 1836.

" Dear S ir,— I congratulate you heartily onyo ur safe re tu rn . D on 't keep me long waiting

before you tell me about your adventures, and whatyou have seen ; send an account of yourself as soonas you can. Som ething about Moscow would deligh tme especially. The name of Moscow always soundsin my ears like the sonorous stroke of a great bell.

If you like the tone of the Davidsbiindler lettersfrom Augsburg , Berlin, Dresden, and M unich, youwould do well to adopt it in you r own. Th is is agood way of working up in an attractive manner anum ber of facts and circu m stances; it gives a

certain compactness and colour to the journal, andth e people like it. You may pictu re to yourselfth e Davidsbund as a kind of spiritual brotherhood,thou gh its visible branches are really p ret ty widelyextended, and will in time, I hope, bear plenty of

go lden fruit. The secrecy of the th ing possessesa great charm for many; and, like everythingm ysterious, a peculiar power. N ot that you rformer let te rs from W arsaw did not please me



3o4 APPENDIX.

exceedingly; indeed I regard them as some of the

best in my jou rna l, as I have told you several times.Y our last let ter b u t one enclosed th e collection ofthe l M osellieder,' and two essays which by th is timeyou will have read in prin t. The other M SS. ( ' Festzu M alin ' (?), etc. [name doubtful] are safe in the

hands of my brother. W he ther he w ill print the1 M oselliede r' even on commission, I have m y doubts.He has at present a great undertaking on his hands,the Universal Dictionary of Commerce, by R. Schiebe,which employs a good deal of his tim e and resources.

About the publication of your other manuscripts Ihope soon to be able to tel l you for certain , as Ishall see my brother some weeks hence at theLeipzig fair. Y ou r idea of lay ing th e scene of atale at Moscow, I th ink a particu larly happy one.

Perhaps I shall be able to do something for yourmanuscript, bu t can 't promise ye t. I long to receiveyour Moscow letters, and anything else from yourpen. If you do n't hear from me for a considerabletime, you must put it down to a trip to the Ehine,whither I am th inkin g of going w ith M endelssohnat the end of April.

I told Sonnenwald to send you your copy of the' Zeitschrift ' long ago, and have just stirred him up



APPENDIX. 3°5

again to despatch it. You had better inquire at

Sonnenwald's." Yours truly,

" E . SCHUMANN."

(5)

Leipzig, July 2nd, 1836.

" Dear Sir,—The reason for my long and un-grateful silence has lain in a good deal of distressof mind, out of which I found it impossible to rousemyself for work. I t was music at last, and some

original musical work of my own especially, andabove all the restorative force of a young constitu-tion, the woods and the green leaves, which havebrought back courage and energy.* My first linesare to you. Like a child at a Christmas-tree, I

stood before your presents, and turned them care-fully over and over. Then I grow angry with my-self that I can do nothing with the booksellers, and

* The crisis alluded to, exercised a highly favourable in-

fluence on his creative power, as we also see from a passagein a letter to his friend Dorn (dated 1839) in which Schumann,

gays " There is certainly much in my music of the strugg le

which it cost me to win Clara, and I am sure you have under-

stood it."X



3o6 APPENDIX.

can never get anything more encouraging thanc to-

morrow' out of them, in spite of all my pains.A nd the w orst of them all (though it m ust be saidin his defence th at he has a great deal of work onhis hands) is my own brother, with whom, by thebye, your M SS . are all left. Th is is,w hy I wanted

to wait, so as to prepare a littl e surprise for you,bu t here I am again w ith em pty hands. This ofitself, after so much as I have received from you, isenough to make me sad. H av e sent to G. Schwab ;and shall to the ' Elegante Zeitung .' B u t why are

you slow to w rite in your own nam e ? I called onyour friends as soon as I received the letter, whichcame to me by a round -abou t way. A nd w hen Itook my chance of finding them at the H otel deEu ssie, the y had ju st left. A g reat pity indeed.

If you want a complete copy of the journal, please.say so. Some weeks ago I sent you, thro ug h Sonnen-wald, a parcel w ith all your essays, a pre tty bigcollection. I read out your las t le tte r bu t one toMendelssohn : we both enjoyed it vastly. H e says

he doesn't care for male part-songs(Mannergesang-quartette), and doesn't think he can do anything inthat way. I hardly th ink so either. B u t he w illsend you something ne xt w inter. Y ou r oratorio I



APPENDIX. 307

w ill forward him to Frankfort in a day or two, if he

doesn 't see it before in pr in t. I t seemed to m akesuch an excellent beginning to my new volume th atI anticipated your permission to publish it. Thelast four lines I should like perhaps a little alte red :the repe tition of ' fe s t ' is a little disagreeable You

will pardon my candour." My proposed journey to the Ehine (your native

place, is it not ?) never came ab ou t; my distresshad quite knocked me down. Since tha t, however,some new airy shapes have found their way out of

m e : one of them I should like to bear your nam e,i. e. I should be glad to dedicate something to you .

" There are some things in my music which youw ill positively dislike, if I may jud ge from yourformer articles ; but our new movement cannot fail

to be intelligible, as a whole, to such a keen eye asyours, and is sure to meet with your sympathy andhe lp. I seem to feel th at we are standing at thebeginning of a new time, and that strings maynow be touched which have never been heard before.

May the future be with it, and some good geniusbring it to perfection.

" Good-bye for to-day . Send me whateve r pearlsyo u have in store. In my manifold occupations I

x 2



3o8 APPENDIX.

want th e assistance of othe rs, and chiefly that of

trustworthy men like yourself." Y ours truly ,

" K O B E RT SCHUMANN."

(6)

" Leipzic, October 18th, 1836." I received w ith joy every thing you mention,

and only wish it were more. A biographical sketchof [name illegible] would be particularly welcome tomy readers and myself. To judg e by one of your

former let ters, you seem to believe that some ofyour MSS. are not yet printed, but this is the caseonly with one—the dream about the prize sym-phony ; sometimes I look at it with real reluctance.There is so much in it that I like, and yet I think

it would do bet ter for any other paper than th e' N eue Zeitschrift,' which once for all is devoted toyou th and progress. Besides, the symphony ofBerlioz has just been so favourably reviewed in ourjournal, that a new and entirely different opinion is

more likely to puzzle the reader than to be of anyuse.

" H r, Fre ier's songs are going to be noticed. Onthe publishers of this place I have no influence



APPENDIX. 309

w hatever. I th ink it be tter for H r. Fre ier to apply

direct to Hofmeister. I have tried myself severaltimes to find a publisher for other people's M SS.,b u t have m et w ith so many refusals tha t I reallydo n't care to ask any more. You can scarcelybelieve how sorry I am for being obliged to say

this to you, to whom I owe so much." W i l l you be kind enough to go once more

th ro ug h your file of th e ' Zeitschrift, ' and tell meexactly w hat num bers are w anting. I sent yousome time ago separate copies of all your articles;

have you received them ?" A "Warsawian composer, N owakowski, who was

here for some weeks, mentioned to me a musicalperiodical in the Po lish langu age . Can you te llme at all w ha t it is like? Last summer you an

nounced to me a M oscowite friend of yours, bu tnobody has appeared yet . The musical season hereis at its he igh t. Ly pin sky is sure to pass "Warsaw.I like him very much, both personally and as anartis t. I gave yourMS. of the poem, 'Die Tonkunst, '

to M end elsso hn ; he sends his than ks and kindre g a rd s ; bu t for the present he cares more formaking love to his chosen than for composing.

" H av e you seen the ' Pap illo ns' and the sonata



3io APPENDIX.

by Florestan and Euseb ius ? I wish you would let

me know you r opinion of them at once. You willsoon read a comprehensive article about them byMoscheles, who is now in London.* D on 't youth in k it be tter to give sometmies ano ther form toyour contributions ? Gottschalkj - has become such

a dear friend of mine that I should be sorry to misshim ; bu t I am obliged to plead for my readers.Besides, new forms bring new ideas.

" Please ask me to do som ething for you whichis very difficult, otherw ise I shall be too light in

the balance." I long for news of you ; please send me your let-

ters d irect by post. Xew Year is coming o n ; do youknow anything to begin the new volume with ?

"Yours faithfully," EOBEET SCHUMANN.":}:

* This sonata appeared under the title , ' Pianoforte-Sonate,Clara zugeeignet von Flo restan und Euseb ius,' Op. 11. Mo-scheles' criticism on it (dated London, October, 1836) mav befound in "Wasielewsky's ' Life of Schum ann', 1st ed., p. 320.

t Gottschalk W edel, the nom de plume of Zuccalmaglio,already explained.

X In order to explain the last le tte r, it is necessary tostate the following facts. The Vienna Kunstve rein had pro -

mised a prize to the composer of the best symphony. H e rr



u

APPENDIX. 31 T

(7)

" Leipzig, Jan. 31, 1837.

My dear Sir,—First of all I must tell you

how I gave Mendelssohn, with whomI dine everyday, your article, ' Erste Tone. ' I stood aside and

watched his face to see what impression would be

made upon him by your last sentence, which I

confess, had several times brought the tears intomy own eyes. He read the article attentively;his face (what a glorious, divine face it is!) re-

vealed all his impressions as he went on. The

von Zuccalmaglio seems to have been afraid the committee

might decide in favour of Berlioz, or a composer of his school,

and, to prevent this unpatriotic proceeding, he wrote, under

his favourite pseudonym, ' Grottschalk Wedel,' the dream

mentioned in the letter , which, notwithstanding its romantic

form, showed a good deal of German Philistinism. In it he

abuses Berlioz's dramatic symphony, ' Episode de la Vie d'un

Artiste,' the great merits of which Schumann himself had

gladly acknowledged in the article alluded to. Z.'s fear,

however, proved to be unnecessary, for Lachner, a Munich

composer, won the prize. Schumann inserted Z.'s article witha note of his own, in which he entirely disagrees with the

views of his friend and of the Vienna committee. Schumann's

and Z.'s article may be read now in the former's ' Gesammelte

Schriften,' 2nd ed., i. 68. and 131.



3 i2 APPENDIX.

further he got the more it seemed to ligh t up , till

at last he came to the passage : it was a pi ty youcould not see h im . ' H a !' he cried, ' w ha t's this ?Tha t is really too m u ch ; I am quite delighted.The re are different kinds of praise , bu t th is comesfrom a pu re he art . ' A nd he went on to say a great

deal more. You should have seen him and heardh im : ' Ten thousand than ks to the man who wrotethis. ' So we went on until we dived into ourchampagne.

" The fact is, as I have long ago made up m y

mind, ' there is no man who can write on music likeWedel;' and I think that I can read the same verdictin the delicate but continual motion of Mendels-sohn's countenance, which is a record of all that ispassing both w ithin and w ithout him . So full of

life is each word of yo ur prose , so pic turesqueare its little tu rn s of express ion, its cadences somelodiously falling and rising; but enough ofthis.

" Do you know his 'St. Pau l, ' in which one beau tyrelieves another w ithout interruption ? H e was thefirst to grant to the Graces a place in the House ofGod. where they certainly ought not to be for-gotten. H ith erto the y have not been able to make



APPENDIX. 313

their voices heard for the multitude of the fugues.

Do read < St. P au l, ' the sooner the better. You willfind in it nothing of Handel or Bach, whateverpeople m ay say, except so far as all church musicmust be alike.

" M any tha nk s for you r manifestoes. The 'E rs te

To ne ' I received w ith you r letter of October 28th ,only a fortnight ago.

111 w ish I could see you and hav e a talk w ithyou this summer, only I am sorry that you are notlikely to find Mendelssohn here, as he hopes to

spend the summer at Frankfort in the arms of hisbeloved . Since he has been engaged he has becomequite a child.

u Have you got any little poems for musicwhichm igh t be published in m y paper? For your tragedy

I can't do an yth ing . As soon as he heard the word' tra ged y ,' M r. Booth stared at me from top to toe,look ing ve ry much amazed. You had be tter collectyou r ' W edelia na ,' for which I shall hope to dosomething, with God's help.

" I am ve ry anxious to hea r your opinion onFlorestan's sonata (the article about it in the1 Z eits ch rift ' was by Moscheles, as I t hin k I toldyou before).



3 i4 APPENDIX.

" Some one has just called, so farewell, and don't

forget" Your

" SCHUMANN."

(8)" Leipzig, April 16^. 1837.

" My dear S ir,— I had scarcely read your letterwhen my brother, the publisher of Zwickau, whohad come for the Leipzig fair, entered my room,and in answer to my hasty question about the

' Mosellieder' told me they would be here in aboutseven days and in prin t. I was ve ry much sur-prised to hear th is, bu t am now rathe r afraid tha tit may have been done w ithou t your full consent.Please set me soon at ease about that . For the same

reason I have retained the parcel for Menzel inS tuttgart, because you may now, perhaps , wish todispose of it otherwise.

" The enterprising pub lisher, E . F reier ofLeipzig, is engaged in printing your north-southern1 Furte . ' Som ething occurs to me tha t m igh t yet bedone. Could you not add to these poems an intro -duction in prose, as Goethe has done so admirablyto his ' D iv an ' ? The num ber of unusu al expre.s-



APPENDIX. 315

sions ('Furte, ' to begin with, was new to me) seems

to require some explanation, which you might putin a poetical form.

" The ' S pli t terrichte r ' I remember having r e a d ;but I must first search for it among my papers, whichcan't be done in a moment. If you are particularly

in w an t of it, let me know ." I shall be ex trem ely glad to see you here. I n

me, however, you must not expect to find much.I scarcely ever talk, except in the evening, andmost while play ing th e piano. The Florestan

sonata, and the back numbers which are wanting, Iprefer to give into your own hands. If you don'tcome soon, I am sorry to say, you won't find Men-delssohn nor Bennet* (an angel of a musician), but,in any case, David and Clara Wieck, both remark-

able people." W r i t e to me please as soon as possible, and

send me heaps of ar ticl es ; the world wants them .M y paper has lately gained much ground . Fo rth e ne xt volume I hope to come to an arrange-

ment with another publisher, more favourable bothto m yself and my con tributors. You are, of course,

* Sir William Sterndale.



316 APPENDIX.

the first I have to think of, and in whose debt I am

deepest. Keep me in your kind remembrance." Yours truly,

U K. SCHUMANN."

(9)

Leipzig, May 18th, 1837.

" B e k ind enough to receive at last from m yhands the first copy of your ' F u rt e . ' Th e Eom ancharacters I do not like, but it was too late tochange them . You will soon receive in a parcel

several copies of the * F u r t e ' and also ten of your1 Mosellieder: ' one of the latter, together with thetragedy , has been sent to Menzel in S tut tga rt, sothe most important things are settled.

" Of Bach's concerto in D minor only M endels-

sohn has a copy. A s soon as he comes back fromthe Khine — that is, not before the end of Septem-be r— I shall have it copied out for you and m y-self; I always considered it as one of the mostadmirable productions in existence.

" l a m very sorry that you can' t come, becauseI want to talk over several things with you whichit would require a great deal of time to explain inw riting . I have a va riety of plans and schemes



APPENDIX. 317

for which I w an t your assistance. F irs t of all, I

have thought for a long time of giving real life toth e D avidsbund by bring ing men of the sameopinion (even if not professional musicians) in acloser connection by means of letters and symbols.If Academies, w ith dunces at their heads, designate

the ir mem bers, w hy should not we, the younge rgeneration, nom inate ourselves ? There is anothe ridea which has a great attraction for me, and which,though of more general importance, might be con-nected with the former\ that is, to found an agency

for publishing works of all composers who would sub-m it to its sta tute s. I t would aim at preserving forthe composer the profits which hitherto have beenalmost entirely absorbed by the pub lisher. T heonly th in g required is to engage an agen t for the

bus iness, whose rig ht s would be legally secured.T he composer would have to make a deposit forth e publish ing expenses of his work, and receive,say once a year, an account of the sale and theoverplus due after the expenses have been paid.

Th us much to-day . Please consider the m attercarefully by yourself; perhaps it might be realisedsome day for the great benefit of composers. Pleasethink about it and let me know your opinion.



318 APPENDIX.

I should have liked to sound you a little on

anothe r point, w hethe r we m ight not pub lishtogether in a double work our past and future ideason music , yo u r 'W ed el ia na 'an d my ' Davidsbiind-leriana.' For many of them it would be a pity th atthe y shoidd be buried in a periodical. M y brothe r

would be the publisher. A ll we should have to dowould be to amalgamate our work in an interestingform, and on this point it would of course be neces-sary to come to some agreement.

" To all th is, m y excellent friend, I hope you

will devote a few hours of your meditations. I tseems to me often, as if I had not ve ry long tolive, and so I should like to do more work beforeI die. I am longing for your answ er.

" Yours faithfully,"KOBERT SCHUMANN."

(10)

Leipzig, August 20th, 1837.

" My dear S ir,— The reason w hy I have keptyou waiting so long for an answer to so manykindnesses of yours, is partly because my hope forM r. Ernem ann 's arrival is still a mere hope. I was



APPENDIX. 319

anxious to tell him all I had to say, m y esteem and

all I feel for you. I t now seems doubtful whe the rhe w ill come at a l l ; some weeks ago h e sent fromDresden some manuscripts of yours; since theneverything has been silent again.

" N ow let u s begin about our music. I am in some

difficulty abou t your letter on Berlioz, as I w asbefore about that of L., which really is exaggerated.M ay I tell you th e reason why it was accepted?

It is not a very noble one, but it is always best tospeak out the plain tru th . L . sent me the letter,

and at the same time asked me urgently for money.This I gave him with pleasure; but then I did notw ish to be the loser by it, and, besides, as I haveworked for the paper for years, I don't want to paymoney out of m y own po ck et; and so it happened.

Besides—pardon me for saying so—you judge theoverture without havingheard it. You have noidea w ha t he contrives to make out of the orchestra.If you have heard agood performance of the over-ture and still wish to have your article published,

I shall do so w ith pleasure. A ltogether the wholebusiness is not worth all this trouble, and the pointis more or less settled by a short notice of the over-tu re in a former volume. My opinion as the rein



32O APPENDIX.

expressed seems to be quite correct even now . I

am only sorry that you should have w ritten yourexcellent article to no purpose. Pe rhaps you canpropose a compromise.

"Your other letter I must keep back untilthin gs are more advanced. If I prin ted it now,

and the foundation of my great German " A rtisticU n io n " should afterwards come to nought, th eeffect would be ra ther ridicu lous . So I m ust askyou to have a little patience.

" The article against Nikolai was remarkably

good and carried conviction with it in every word.D on 't forget to write more of that kin d. By thebye, which concerto of Bach's do you want to havecopied out— the one for three pianos, or th a t forone ? Perhaps you would also like to have a copy

of his grea t mass in B minor? I should like foronce to make you one or two Christmas presents .Write and tell me what you wish to have.

" A s for Freier 's m anuscripts, I sent them off toMessrs. Schott as early as the Ea ster fair. H av en 'tyou received yet a copy of the 'M osellied er? ' Theyhave been despatched safely from he re , as well asthe copies for your bro the r a t Cologne. A ll themanuscripts you sent me are in my brother's hands.



APPENDIX. 321

He is so difficult to manage that I am sorry I

have recommended him to you. Do you still liketh e idea of w riting new words to M ozart's operas ?To tell you the truth I think it impossible.

" I am over head and ears in work, and so mustfinish with my kindest regards and in the hope of

an early answer." Yours truly,

" E O B E RT S C H U M A N N . "

(11)

This lette r refers almost en tirely to private m atters. Iselect the following characteristic passages :—

Leipzig, January \Zth, 1838.

" I for my own pa rt understand Berlioz asclearly as the blue sky above meI th ink the re is really a new time in music coming.I t m ust come. Fifty years have worked greatchanges and carried us on a good deal further."

And about Henselt—" Ask him to play to you for hours together, and

then only will you learn how to appreciate andadm ire him . Of all pianists (and I have heard all



322 APPENDIX.

of them and often) he has given me the greates t

pleasure."

(12)

Leipzig, August 8th,1838.

" M y dearest F riend ,— I have to tell you animportant piece of news to-day, bu t you m ust notlet any one else hea r about it. I should have pre-ferred to communicate it to you personally, butnow there is some unce rtain ty w he the r you will

find me still he re w hen you come in October. Thething is tha t the ' Zeitschrift ' w ill appear from the1st of Jan uary, 1839 , at Vienna, where I am goingmyself at th e end of September. I hope to derivemuch good by this change— a new round of life,

new work, and new ideas. I th in k I can do agreat deal where people swim in confusion ' likeflies in the bu tterm ilk , ' as Je tter says. B ut now, mydear "Wedel, give me your hand and promise menot to leave me in th e lurch in my new place. Ishall have many troubles to get over ; and we shallhave to go on ra ther gently , as the censorship isstrict, and will suppress freely.

" F irst of all, yo u would oblige me by sending



APPENDIX. 323

for some time to come as much MS. as you pos-

sibly can. From October till December my ' vocal'minister, Oswald Lorenz, is going to look after theediting of the journal, and I must not leave him inwant of matter.

" In the second place, I want you to think about

an article on the new arrangement, its consequences,etc., to grace the first number that appears inVienna. You know how to manage this sodelicately that I always like to let you have thefirst word, and I am sure to be prevented by

business from undertaking work at any greatlength for the next time. Your introductory essayought to be with me in Yienna by the end ofNovember at the latest. My exact address I shalllet you have before long.

" I am getting continually deeper and deeper inyour debt, and I must ask you to think aboutsettling accounts.

"M any thanks for all you have sent me la te ly ;it is all going to be published by-and-by. Some of

the musical quotations of Eisner's ' Passion M usic 'had to be left out, as they would have taken up toomuch room. But I thought whether the march,which is a whole in itself and which I also like

Y 2



3 2 4 APPENDIX.

extrem ely, m ight no t be published in one of the

ne xt musical supplements. You would oblige by aline about that. E rne m ann's songs smiled at meout of a heap of music, like blossoms, especially someof them ; they w ill be noticed in the ' Zeits ch rift/Perhaps Ernemann has something (for four voices)

in store for the supplements.:i M any than ks also for the ' Popu lar S on gs /

although I m ust confess that I have no t alw aysbeen pleased w ith the accompaniment. A t times itdoes not seem to be na tura l enough. B u t then

of course I listen w ith the ears of a musician, andeven in a popular song I can 't s tand fifths andoctaves, although one sometimes meets w ith themin such pieces.

" G ottschalk will find his name on 'Kinderscenen,'

which are going to appear under m y own. H e issure to find some little pleasure in them, for theycome from the bottom of my hea rt.

" A Nuremberg m erchant brought me your letterand account. I gave him what I had— not much,I am sorry to say.

" Good-bye for to -d ay ; I recommend m y plansto your consideration, and hope to hear from you,or be tter to see you soon. " Yours,

" E . SCHUM ANN ."



APPENDIX. 325

(13)

Vienna, October 19M, 1838.

" M y dear Fr ien d,— I regret to hear tha t youhave been in Leipzig w ithout my being there toreceive you, an event to which I have always

looked forward w ith so much pleasure. B ut youare sure to have found a trusty companion in theexcellent G [name illegible]. I am sorry you did no tfind Idomeneo, bu t you m ust not blame me for that .I had w ritte n to my brother imm ediately, bu t he

was on his way to Leipzig, so the letter missedhim , and th is accounts for the delay. Have youno t got it yet ? I have reminded him again fromhere.

" N o w , I should like to hear about yourself—

how you are, and if you still remember me and the' Zeitsch rift.' I have not heard from Leipzig th a tyou left anyth ing for my paper. Have you for-gotten all about the 'B au re de, ' or have you any-th in g else fit for the first num bers of the new

volume, which is to come out in V ienna? TheViennese would like best something cheerful—story -like, not by any means Catilinarian, wh ichthey don't understand.



326 APPENDIX.

" A t th e same time , the publication of the-4

Zeitschr ift' in Y ienna is not yet a settled affair.You can 't believe how m any difficulties the censorshipmakes, and also the publishe rs, who are frightenedfor the glory of the ir S trauss, Proch , and others.Still I hope to arrange it before the new year,

and therefore ask you to send me yo ur contribu-tions for the next volume direct by post toVienna.

I long for a letter from you.

" Heuser the singer is h e re ; he has a most com-plete collection of Bach's compositions, especially

many unpublished pieces, and is glad to place atdisposal what he is asked for. If you wan t any-thing that Mr. Ernemann does not possess, I 'll haveit copied out for you.

"About Vienna i tself I have my own ideas;I don't think I am suited for these kind of people ;their flippancy is really sometimes too much for me.Still a closer acquaintance w ith single indiv idua lswill, I am sure, modify my opinions in manyrespects.

" Keep me in kind remem brance. I now wantmy "Wedel more than ever. Seyfried asked afteryou with the greatest interest.



APPENDIX. 327

" N o w you know all I have to ask yo u; let m e

soon have a kind word from you." Tours truly,

" E . SCHUMANN."

(14)

Vienna, March 10th, 1839.

" M y dear Sir and Friend,— A lthough I haveno t writt en to you for a long time, I have beenconstantly in intellectual intercourse w ith you. I

always waited in order to tell you definitelyabout the settling down here both of myself and mypaper. N ow I am able to do so. N either I normy paper are to remain in this city, which I find isno t th e rig h t place for either of them . After care-

ful consideration, I came to th e conclusion th a t th eth in g couldn 't be done advantageously. The chiefinpedim ent was the censorship. A t the end of April,a t the latest, I shall be back in Leipzig, w ith re -new ed s trength to carry on my journal, which it

m ust be confessed has suffered du ring my absence.E ve ry thing remains as it w a s ; and I also hope tofind yo ur friendship unaltered. Your last lette r,together with your Warsaw friend's contributions, I



328 APPENDIX.

received some time ago\ many than ks. The Ave

Maria and Jagdlied by Ernemann I l ike very much,but of D'Alquen I am not able to say the same;he seems even w an ting in technical skill. Theessay ' E rste T one' is exq uisite. N ex t first of M ayI intend to constitute our ' D av id sb un d' by means of

an a rticle in the ' Zeitschrift.' I should like you toread it first, were it not for the long distance whichdivides us. M ay I hope to find a le tte r from youin Leipzig ? How are you, and what are you work-ing at ? The S tu ttgar t ' N ationalzeitung ' is going

to become a highly respectable bully, against whichwe must be on our guard. Th e editor is very weakas a musician, but he knows how to puff. B utenough for this time, and don't forget

" Yours truly,

" SCHUMANN."

(15)

" Leipzig, April 27th, 1839.

" My dearest Sir and Fr ien d,— I have return edsafely, although the first th in g I learned was th enews of a death in our family. You w ill alsounderstand that after the last half-year I had many



APPENDIX 329

arrears to get through ; and that is why I have not

answ ered your kind lette r before now. The absencefrom my paper I believe has been to some advan-tage. I t now smiles on me as young and fresh aswhen we first started i t ; and ju st now diligencean d perseverance are more necessary than ever.

Th e S tuttg art ' U niversa list ' begins to ' wax f a t ; 'and notwithstanding his being an arch humbug,without, as I think, the vaguest idea of music, yet heknow s how to manipu late words and titles, andtherefore m us t be checked somehow. I can 't

un de rstand how those old gentlemen, like Spohr,Schneider, and o thers, can let themselves be imposedupon by such a windy bragg art. Perhaps he willmake you also his corresponding member, as he didm e w ithout my know ledge. A n impertinen t fellow,

with whom it is better to have nothing to do." I am glad to hear about the news which M r.

Ernem ann has brough t from P etersbu rg. I hopeyo u'll t h in k of me. Some time ago I received a notefrom W arsaw , signed W ahrlich , which complains

of several things in your letters, etc. I t did notseem im portan t enough to send it on to you. I'l lkeep it for you in case you come to Leipz ig. Ihope you will come; I shall stay here in any case



330 APPENDIX.

during summer. I hope that something of the

{word illegible] will please you, especially if I playmy own things on the piano, and am in a happymood. I wish you would look at the ' Kinderscenen/and say something about it with your genial "Wede-lian vein. My note-paper has come to an end.

Only let me add my kindest regards." E. SCHUMANN."

(16)"Leipzig, Bee. Zlst, 1840.

" My dear Sir and Friend,— First of all I haveto thank you for your ready assistance. You haverecalled Thibaut's image to my mind in the mostlively manner. Tour paper adorns the first numberof the new volume of the( Zeitschrift,' for which I

hope you will preserve your further kind sympathy." I am sorry I don't know E [name illegible] at

all; but even if I did, it would be of no great usefor your purposes. Every one describes him as anobstinate, stiff-necked fellow, who won't listen toadvice. None of my friends are acquainted withMm. The best thing for you is to send him yourMS. to read. Have you no connections at Dres-den—through Liittichau, Miltitz, or Tieck? Your



APPENDIX. 331

piece would be in the best hands there. Our

comedy and tragedy are less than middling." I send you the 'M yrth en ' and three little songs.

Perhaps you will find an opportunity of havingthe songs sung to you by beautiful lip s: they soundvery nice; I heard them the day before yesterday.

The 'Myrthen' of course give a deeper insight intothe secret of my musical work. I wish I couldhave added my cycle of Heine's Songs; but I haveno copy left. Several other things have also ap-peared lately about which I hope to converse with

you before long. Music is sure to absorb meentire ly ; I always have to tear myself from it byforce. But enough. Everything else I must tellyou personally.

" I have still another question and favour to ask

you. A certain Dr. v. Kaiserlingk of Berlin offersme his services as correspondent, on the introduc-tion of the publisher. Do you know him at all?

Hard experience has made me cautious. Perhapsyou can tell me about him.

" I should wish to know your address; I don'tlike to get at you always through• the medium ofthird persons. Also tell me when you are reallycoming to Leipzig.



332 APPENDIX.

" Please write to me soon, and keep me in kind

remembrance." Yours truly,

" K O B . SCHUMANN.

" Hiller writes from Milan to say that he is en-

gaged to the Polish lady we wot of. D id I tell

you that he sent you a letter to Warsaw, addressed< Gottschalk Wedel, ' which you of course did not

g e t ? "

(17)"Leipzig, January 23rd, 1844.

" M y dearest F ri e n d ,— I have owed you ananswer for a long time, and even now I can onlysend you a short no te. I stand w ith one foot in

the carriage to start for a long pilgrim age to Peters-burg and Moscow. Before, I was preven ted fromwriting by my indecision about the opera-text, andalso by the performances of myPeri here and atDresden. On both occasions I got much pleasure,

and perhaps some honour. Now I should like tobegin an opera soon; but for the present thisnorthward journey compels me to abandon all plansand preparations of this kind. B u t how excellent

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