Richard Wagner: A Life in Music

by Martin Geck

  The aim, in a word, is to describe Wagner’s music as an “acoustic hallucination”35 and in that way tap into forms of perception associated with our modern media society. At the same time such writers are keen to understand what it is that makes Wagner’s music so attractive to audiences who do not approach the composer from the standpoint of classical music and who are not interested in his edifice of ideas. From this point of view, too, Wagner—whether he wants it or not—is a precursor of modernism. Nietzsche was one of the first writers to sense this when he compared Wagner’s music to that of his predecessors. “Earlier music,” he argued, invited its listeners to “dance: in pursuit of which the needful preservation of orderly measure compelled the soul of the listener to a continual self-possession.” Wagner’s “endless melody,” by contrast, belonged to a type of listener who “goes into the sea, gradually relinquishing a firm tread on the bottom and finally surrendering unconditionally to the watery element: one is supposed to swim.”36

  There is no doubt that current media theory has the ability to offer new readings of important aspects of Wagner’s works, but it would represent a loss if all that were left of the idea of the total artwork was the subtle despotism of postmodern media technology. However willingly Wagner’s stage works may be adapted to meet the requirements of today’s event culture, for all who have eyes and ears they continue to demonstrate the optimistically forward-looking yet desperate contortions of a society which in its search for happiness is by no means as coolly postmodern as it sometimes claims to be. At all events, I myself cannot reflect on the states of intoxication and on the phantasmagorias in Wagner’s works without seeing them against the background of the sacred element, or “le sacré,” a background against which the art of the modern world in general is set, for all that art may be bashfully coy or refracted.

  Nor should we forget that there are many media spectacles—but there is only one Wagner.

  NOTES

  INTRODUCTION

  1. Cosima Wagner, Die Tagebücher, ed. Martin Gregor-Dellin and Dietrich Mack (Munich: R. Piper, 1976–77), 1:21; translated into English by Geoffrey Skelton as Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (London: Collins, 1978–80), 1:27 (entry of Jan. 1, 1869) (hereafter CT).

  2. Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: Sein Leben, sein Werk, sein Jahrhundert (Munich: R. Piper, 1980), 733; translated by J. Maxwell Brownjohn as Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century (London: Collins, 1983), 443.

  3. CT 2:335; Engl. trans. 2:295 (entry of April 22, 1879).

  4. CT 1:202; Engl. trans. 1:193 (entry of Feb. 25, 1870).

  5. Richard Wagner, Mein Leben, ed. Martin Gregor-Dellin (Munich: List, 1976), 512; translated by Andrew Gray as My Life, ed. Mary Whittall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 499 (hereafter ML).

  6. But see Warren Darcy, Wagner’s “Das Rheingold” (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).

  7. Arthur Schopenhauer, Werke in fünf Bänden: Nach den Ausgaben letzter Hand, ed. Lutger Lütkehaus (Zurich: Haffmans Verlag, 1988), 4:265; translated by E. F. J. Payne as Parerga and Paralipomena (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), 1:265.

  8. Johannes Fried, Der Schleier der Erinnerung: Grundzüge einer historischen Memorik (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2004), 25–32.

  9. Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner, 813–14; this passage was not included in the English translation.

  10. Udo Bermbach, Der Wahn des Gesamtkunstwerks: Richard Wagners politisch-ästhetische Utopie (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1994), 11.

  11. Christian Kaden, Des Lebens wilder Kreis: Musik im Zivilisationsprozeß (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1993), 169.

  12. Peter Wapnewski, Der traurige Gott: Richard Wagner in seinen Helden, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Berlin Verlag, 2001), 276.

  13. CT 1:191; Engl. trans. 1:183 (entry of Jan. 22, 1870).

  14. CT 2:684; Engl. trans. 2:616 (entry of Feb. 6, 1881).

  15. Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2009), 1.2:696; translated by Harry Zohn as “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in Benjamin, Illuminations (London: Pimlico, 1999), 248.

  16. Joachim Kaiser, Leben mit Wagner (Munich: Albrecht Knaus, 1990), 15.

  17. White’s study was first published in 1978 under the title Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism by John Hopkins University Press (Baltimore) and deals, among other things, with the essentially subjective nature of historiography, a point underlined by the title of the German translation, produced in collaboration with the German historian Reinhart Koselleck and published in Stuttgart in 1999 as Auch Klio dichtet oder Die Fiktion des Faktischen (Clio too writes poetry, or the fiction of the factual).

  CHAPTER ONE

  1. CT 1:409; Engl. trans. 1:386 (entry of July 5, 1871).

  2. ML 17–18; Engl. trans. 11.

  3. Otto Strobel, ed., König Ludwig II. und Richard Wagner: Briefwechsel (Karlsruhe: G. Braun, 1936–39), 3:153 (letter from Wagner to Ludwig II, May 28, 1879).

  4. CT 1:714; Engl. trans. 1:664 (entry of Aug. 13, 1873).

  5. CT 1:187; Engl. trans. 1:179 (entry of Jan. 11, 1870).

  6. ML 15; Engl. trans. 9.

  7. ML 23; Engl. trans. 16.

  8. Richard Wagner, Sämtliche Briefe, ed. Gertrud Strobel and others (Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1967–2000, and Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Hartel, 1999–), 1:308 (letter from Richard to Minna Wagner, June 22, [1836]) (hereafter SB).

  9. CT 1:627 and 2:645; Engl. trans. 1:583 and 2:581 (entries of Jan. 12, 1873, and Dec. 24, 1880).

  10. CT 1:745; Engl. trans. 1:692 (entry of Oct. 29, 1873).

  11. ML 19–20; Engl. trans. 13 (emended).

  12. ML 11; Engl. trans. 5 (emended).

  13. CT 1:186; Engl. trans. 1:178–79 (entry of Jan. 9, 1870).

  14. ML 20; Engl. trans. 13–14 (emended).

  15. SB 2:358 (letter from Wagner to Karl Gaillard, Jan. 30, 1844).

  16. SB 6:56 (letter from Wagner to Julie Ritter, Jan. 20, 1854).

  17. SB 5:495 (letter from Wagner to Franz Liszt, Jan. 15, 1854).

  18. Marcel Proust, À la recherche du temps perdu, ed. Pierre Clarac and André Ferré (Paris: Gallimard, 1973–77), 3:920; translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin as In Search of Lost Time (London: Folio Society, 2000), 6:499.

  19. ML 32; Engl. trans. 25.

  20. SB 1:96 (“Autobiographical Sketch”).

  21. Isolde Vetter, “‘Leubald, ein Trauerspiel’: Richard Wagners erstes (erhaltenes) Werk,” Die Programmhefte der Bayreuther Festspiele 1988, vol. 7: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, ed. Matthias Theodor Vogt (Bayreuth: Emil Mühl, 1988), 1–19. The text of the play is reproduced in German on pp. 95–207.

  22. SB 8:153 (letter from Wagner to August Röckel, Aug. 23, 1856).

  23. Richard Wagner, Das Braune Buch: Tagebuchaufzeichnungen 1865 bis 1882, ed. Joachim Bergfeld (Zurich: Atlantis, 1975), 70; translated by George Bird as The Diary of Richard Wagner, 1865–1882: The Brown Book (London: Victor Gollancz, 1980), 61 (emended) (hereafter BB).

  24. CT 1:193; Engl. trans. 1:185 (entry of Jan. 31, 1870).

  25. CT 1:198; Engl. trans. 1:189 (emended) (entry of Feb. 12, 1870).

  26. CT 1:71; Engl. trans. 1:73 (entry of March 12, 1869).

  27. Richard Wagner, Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen, 4th ed. (Leipzig: C. F. W. Siegel’s Musikalienhandlung, 1907), 3:316 (hereafter GS); translated by William Ashton Ellis as Richard Wagner’s Prose Works (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Trübner, 1893–99), 2:111 (emended) (hereafter PW) (Opera and Drama).

  28. John Deathridge, Martin Geck, and Egon Voss, eds., Wagner Werk-Verzeichnis (WWV): Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke Richard Wagners und ihrer Quellen (Mainz: Schott, 1986), 101 (hereafter WWV).

  29. Egon Voss, “Die Feen: Eine Oper für Wagners Familie,” in “Wagner und kein Ende”: Betrachtungen und Studien (Zurich: Atlantis, 1996), 17–18.

  30. Carl Dahlhaus, “Wagners Stellung in der Musikgeschichte,” in Ulrch Müller and Peter Wapnewski, eds., Richard-
Wagner-Handbuch (Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner, 1986), 66; translated by Alfred Clayton as “Wagner’s Place in the History of Music,” in John Deathridge, ed., Wagner Handbook (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 104.

  31. Werner Breig, “Wagners kompositorisches Werk,” in Müller and Wapnewski, eds., Richard-Wagner-Handbuch, 364; translated by Paul Knight and Horst Leuchtmann as “The Musical Works,” in Deathridge, Wagner Handbook, 406.

  32. Paul Bekker, Wagner: Das Leben im Werke (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1924), 89; translated by M. M. Bozman as Richard Wagner: His Life in His Work (New York: W. W. Norton, 1931), 79; see also Ludwig Holtmeier, “Von den Feen zum Liebesverbot: Zur Geschichte eines Dilettanten,” in Richard Wagner und seine Zeit, ed. Eckehard Kiem and Ludwig Holtmeier (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 2003), 38–44.

  33. GS 4:255; PW 1:296 (emended) (A Communication to My Friends).

  34. GS 4:253; PW 1:293 (A Communication to My Friends).

  35. CT 1:476; Engl. trans. 1:445 (entry of Jan. 3, 1872).

  36. Peter Sloterdijk, Thinker on Stage: Nietzsche’s Materialism, translated by Jamie Owen Daniel (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 23.

  37. Friedrich Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1988), 1:479; translated by R. J. Hollingdale as Untimely Meditations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983),

  38. GS 4:264; PW 1:306 (A Communication to My Friends).

  39. Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke, 13:500.

  40. “Erlösung durch Untergang”: “Untergang” is a notoriously difficult term to translate, its semantic field extending from the “setting” of the sun and the “decline” of the West (in the Spenglerian sense) to the “sinking” of the Titanic and physical or figurative ruin.

  41. Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke, 6:16; translated by Walter Kaufmann as “The Case of Wagner,” in Nietzsche, Basic Writings of Nietzsche (New York: Modern Library, 1968), 616.

  42. GS 5:85; PW 3:100 (emended) (“Jews in Music”).

  43. The traditional translation, “Judaism in Music,” was first proposed by Ferdinand Praeger in the New York Musical Gazette on February 24, 1855, but seems to the present translator to be potentially misleading, for although the word Judaism could be used in the nineteenth century to mean “Jewry,” it is nowadays limited to the Jewish religion. Wagner’s concern was ethnic rather than religious.

  44. SB 6:68–69 (letter from Wagner to August Röckel, Jan. 25–26, 1854). Wagner retained the form Wodan until 1860.

  45. Richard Wagner, Sämtliche Werke, ed. Carl Dahlhaus and others (Mainz: Schott, 1970–), 29.1:54 (hereafter SW) (Dokumente zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Bühnenfestspiels Der Ring des Nibelungen).

  46. SW 29.1:30 (Eduard Devrient’s diary, Dec. 2, 1848).

  47. GS 4:72; PW 2:201 (Opera and Drama).

  48. Christian Kaden, Des Lebens wilder Kreis: Musik im Zivilisationsprozeß (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1993), 169.

  49. GS 4:266; PW 1:308 (A Communication to My Friends).

  50. SB 6:299 (letter from Wagner to Liszt, Dec. [16?], 1854).

  51. Dieter Borchmeyer, Richard Wagner: Ahasvers Wandlungen (Frankfurt: Insel Verlag, 2002), 142; translated by Daphne Ellis as Drama and the World of Richard Wagner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 100.

  52. GS 10:307–8; PW 6:312 (emended) (“The Stage Consecration Festival Drama in Bayreuth in 1882”).

  A WORD ABOUT FELIX MENDELSSOHN

  1. Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Carl Mendelssohn Bartholdy, eds., Briefe aus den Jahren 1830 bis 1847 von Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (Leipzig: Hermann Mendelssohn, 1870), 1:230 (letter from Mendelssohn to Carl Immermann, Jan. 11, 1832).

  2. CT 2:530; Engl. trans. 2:475 (entry of May 8, 1880).

  3. GS 5:79; PW 3:93–94 (“Jews in Music”).

  4. CT 2:283; Engl. trans. 2:247 (entry of Jan. 3, 1879).

  5. CT 2:367; Engl. trans. 2:325 (entry of June 17, 1879).

  6. CT 1:404–5; Engl. trans. 1:381 (entry of June 23, 1871).

  7. GS 8:266; PW 4:295 (“On Conducting”).

  8. Mendelssohn, Briefe, 2:302 (letter from Mendelssohn to Livia Frege, Aug. 31, 1846). The soprano soloist at the Birmingham performance of Elijah on Aug. 26, 1846, was Maria Caradori-Allan (1800–1865).

  CHAPTER TWO

  1. GS 4:256; PW 1:297 (emended) (A Communication to My Friends).

  2. CT 2:300; Engl. trans. 2:263 (entry of Jan. 31, 1879).

  3. GS 4:256; PW 1:297 (emended) (A Communication to My Friends).

  4. Egon Voss, “Einflüsse Rossinis und Bellinis auf das Werk Wagners,” in Christoph-Hellmut Mahling and Kristina Pfarr, eds., Richard Wagner und seine “Lehrmeister” (Mainz: Are Edition, 1999), 115; see also CT 2:508–9; Engl. trans. 2:455 (entry of March 22, 1880).

  5. Richard Wagner, “Die deutsche Oper,” Zeitung für die elegante Welt 111 (June 10, 1834), 441–42; PW 8:55 (“On German Opera”).

  6. CT 1:541; Engl. trans. 1:505 (entry of June 30, 1872).

  7. GS 4:256; PW 1:297 (emended) (A Communication to My Friends).

  8. SB 1:164 (letter to Theodor Apel, Sept. 15, [1834]).

  9. SB 1:223 (letter to Theodor Apel, Oct. 2, 1835).

  10. SB 1:160 (undated letter to Theodor Apel, [July 27 or Aug. 3, 1834]).

  11. SB 1:158 (letter to Theodor Apel, July 3, [1834]).

  12. WWV p. 141.

  13. GS 4:254; PW 1:295 (A Communication to My Friends).

  14. ML 47; Engl. trans. 39.

  15. ML 48; Engl. trans. 40.

  16. ML 48; Engl. trans. 41.

  17. GS 4:256; PW 1:297 (A Communication to My Friends).

  18. ML 128; Engl. trans. 119.

  19. GS 4:257; PW 1:298 (emended) (A Communication to My Friends).

  20. SB1:104; PW 1:12 (emended) (“An Autobiographical Sketch”). When revising this text in 1871 for inclusion in his collected writings, Wagner replaced “Auber” by “Adam.”

  21. ML 167; Engl. trans. 157.

  22. John N. Burk, ed., Richard Wagner: Briefe; Die Sammlung Burrell (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1953), 119–20; translated by Hans Abraham and others as The Letters of Richard Wagner: The Burrell Collection (London: Victor Gollancz, 1951), 83 (emended).

  23. Siegfried Fornaçon, “Richard Wagners Seereise von Pillau nach London,” Schiff und Zeit 8 (1978): 1–10.

  24. August Kubizek, Adolf Hitler, mein Jugendfreund, 6th ed. (Graz: Leopold Stocker, 1995), 118; translated by E. V. Anderson as Young Hitler: The Story of Our Friendship (Maidstone: George Mann, 1973), 66.

  25. Friedrich Schleiermacher, Pädagogische Schriften, ed. Theodor Schulze and Erich Weniger (Düsseldorf: Küpper, 1957), 1:133.

  26. Wolfgang Robert Griepenkerl, Das Musikfest oder die Beethovener, 2nd ed. (Braunschweig: Eduard Leibrock, 1841), 60.

  27. Joachim Kaiser, Leben mit Wagner (Munich: Albrecht Knaus, 1990), 82.

  28. Udo Bermbach, “Blühendes Leid”: Politik und Gesellschaft in Richard Wagners Musikdramen (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 2003), 65 and 67–68.

  29. Helmut Kirchmeyer, Das zeitgenössische Wagner-Bild, vol. 3, Dokumente 1846–1850 (Regensburg: Gustav Bosse, 1968), col. 395.

  30. SB 10:264–65 (letter to Albert Niemann, Jan. 25, 1859).

  31. Mario Bortolotto, Wagner l’oscuro (Milan: Adelphi, 2003), 75.

  32. SB 6:97 (letter to Franz von Dingelstedt, March 20, 1854).

  33. CT 1:422–23; Engl. trans. 1:398 (entry of July 28, 1871).

  34. GS 9:221; PW 5:219 (On Actors and Singers).

  35. GS 9:219; PW 5:217 (emended) (On Actors and Singers).

  36. GS 3:166; PW 1:201 (The Artwork of the Future).

  37. BB 170; Engl. trans. 142 (“Recollections of Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld”).

  38. SB 4:377–78 (letter to Franz Liszt, May 29, 1852).

  39. Sieghart Döhring and Sabine Henze-Döhring, Oper und Musikdrama im 19. Jahrhundert (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1997), 144–46.

  40. See Nor
bert Miller, “Große Oper und Historiengemälde: Überlegungen zur Zusammenarbeit von Eugène Scribe und Giacomo Meyerbeer,” in Jens Malte Fischer, ed., Oper und Operntext (Heidelberg: Winter, 1985), 45–80.

  41. SB 1:589 (undated letter to Ferdinand Heine, [late Jan. 1842]).

  42. See Martin Geck, “Rienzi-Philologie,” in Carl Dahlhaus, ed., Das Drama Richard Wagners als musikalisches Kunstwerk (Regensburg: Gustav Bosse, 1970), 187 (undated letter from Cosima Wagner to Felix Mott, [Sept. 1888]).

  43. Werner Breig, “Wagners kompositorisches Werk,” in Ulrich Müller and Peter Wapnewski, eds., Richard-Wagner-Handbuch (Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner, 1986), 373; translated by Paul Knight and Horst Leuchtmann as “The Musical Works,” in John Deathridge, ed., Wagner Handbook (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 413.

  44. John Deathridge, Wagner’s Rienzi: A Reappraisal Based on a Study of the Sketches and Drafts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 43–44.

  45. SB 1:503 (letter to Gottfried Engelbert Anders, July 13, 1841).

  46. SB 1:507 (undated letter to Joseph Tichatschek, [Sept. 6 or 7, 1841]).

  A WORD ABOUT GIACOMO MEYERBEER

  1. CT 1:78; Engl. trans. 1:80 (entry of March 30, 1869).