Richard Wagner His Life and His Dramas / A Biographical Study of the Man and an Explanation of His Work

CHAPTER III THE MUSICAL SYSTEM

In its details this Wagnerian system of musico-textual speech divides itself into music constructed of leading motives, or themes with a specified meaning, and music of the picture, or purely scenic music, such as that of the sailors in the first scene of "Tristan und Isolde," or the "Waldweben" of "Siegfried." And again the sung parts of the score divide themselves into ordinary speech, or quasi-recitative, and the speech of the high emotional situation, which is either intensely declamatory or extraordinarily melodious, according to the nature of the mood which has been reached.[30] A further feature of the scheme, which must not be overlooked, is that the repetitions of the thematic ideas are given chiefly to the orchestra, which thus becomes not a mere accompaniment, but a most potent explicator of the drama. This treatment of the orchestra makes it the creator of a musical atmosphere which surrounds the actors in the drama. Even when one has no acquaintance whatever with the specified meanings of the "leading motive" ("leading" should read "guiding"), the dramatic influence of the musical background is such that he is brought into a complete emotional accord with the action on the stage. Thus the orchestra becomes a most potent factor in demonstrating and making effective Wagner's tenet that "In the drama we must become knowers through the Feeling. The Understanding tells us 'So is it,' only when the Feeling has told us, 'So must it be.'" It was with thoughts of this in his mind that Wagner wrote on Sept. 9, 1850, to Herr Von Zigesar:

"An audience which assembles in a fair mood is satisfied as soon as it distinctly understands what is going forward, and it is a great mistake to think that a theatrical audience must have a special knowledge of music in order to receive the right impression of a musical drama. To this entirely erroneous opinion we have been brought by the fact that in opera music has wrongly been made the aim,—while the drama was merely a means for the display of the music. Music, on the contrary, should do no more than contribute its full share towards making the drama clearly and quickly comprehensible at every moment. While listening to a good—that is, a rational—opera, people should, so to speak, not think of the music at all, but only feel it in an unconscious manner, while their fullest sympathy should be wholly occupied by the action represented. Every audience which has an uncorrupted sense and a human heart is therefore welcome to me as long as I may be certain that the dramatic action is made more immediately comprehensible and moving by the music, instead of being hidden by it."

From the actual potency of Wagner's music in producing the proper emotional mood in the auditor and from his own words, such as the above, the present writer has frequently argued that an intimate acquaintance with the leitmotiv scheme is not necessary to an understanding of the Wagner dramas. To comprehend and appreciate the grandeur of such scenes as the "TodesverkÜndigung" in "Die WalkÜre," the death of Siegfried and the immolation of BrÜnnhilde it is not needful to be able to catalogue the guiding themes as they pass through the vistas of the glowing score. All that is essential is an open mind. The eloquence of the music will do the rest. And if the guiding motives fail to create the proper emotional investiture for the same, then they are valueless, even at Wagner's own rating, for he says that we must feel before we can understand a drama. And we ourselves can readily see how useless it is to tell us the specified meanings of sweet musical phrases if they do not, when heard, help to warm into a vitalising glow the significance of the text and action. If they fail to do this, the organic union so ardently sought by Wagner does not exist. If they succeed, it matters not at all whether we know their names.

But we are all Elsas to these Lohengrins and Wagner himself was one of the Ortruds, for he has tempted us to ask the question, which is, fortunately for us, not fatal to our happiness. It becomes natural and proper therefore for every student of this master's works to take cognisance of the leitmotiv system and to aim at a thorough comprehension of its nature and its purpose. These have been very often misrepresented, and, even by many devoted admirers of Wagner's works, are yet misunderstood.

It was out of his first conviction that the musical embodiment of a mood having once been found should not be changed that the leit motif system grew. This first conviction led him to adopt in "Der Fliegende HollÄnder" certain musical phrases as typical of principal ideas in the play. He made a theme for the Dutchman's personality, a melody for his longing, another for the personality of Senta, the redeeming potency in the drama. In making these themes he sought to render them expressive not only of their primary dramatic ideas, but of the beautiful symbolism which lay behind these ideas. As this symbolism appealed largely to the sensibility of the hearer, it was peculiarly fitting that he should summon the aid of the music to the work for which it was best suited, namely the awakening of the sensibilities and through them of the emotions.

Out of this first experimental use of leading themes, Wagner gradually advanced to a complete and elaborate system. The student will look in vain for the finished system in "TannhÄuser" and "Lohengrin." In the former of these two works the leit motif is not employed and there is rather a tendency to use what is called "music of the scene" as a reminder of the place of the occurrence of an action than to repeat music expressive of the emotion lying behind the action itself. In "Lohengrin," however, one finds the leading motive employed in a few instances in precisely the same manner as it is in "Siegfried" or "Tristan," but not with the same persistency. It was in the construction of the great trilogy and its prologue that he found the full value of his system of musical cross-references, for in the vast complexity of this story, the explanatory force of music to which a direct meaning had been given was afforded the widest possible field of action.

The student of the system will find that the leading motives, guiding themes, typical phrases, or whatever one pleases to call them, are of several kinds. Some are employed very arbitrarily, it must be admitted, but the text always makes their meaning clear and thereafter one easily understands the composer's intent. They may be divided as follows: motives of personalities, as the Donner, the Siegfried-Hero, the BrÜnnhilde motive; those of the moving forces of the drama, as the contract, the need of the Gods, and the curse; those of the tribal or racial elements, as the Volsung, or the Nibelung motive; those of places, objects, and occupations, as the smithy, the sword, the Walhalla, and those of the scene, as the Rhine music, the forging, and the fire music. This is a rude classification, but it will answer the present object, which is an exposition of the nature and aims of the system. The music of the tribal or racial elements and that of the scene, the student will find, is seldom modified in the course of the drama, while that relating to personalities is often changed in conformity with alterations in the characters of which it is typical. In "Der Ring des Nibelungen" the motives of the Tarnhelm, the gold, the Rhine, the sword, the dragon, and similar musical devices retain their original form almost always, though occasionally the demands of harmony and figure call for more or less altered suggestions of them.

But the personal themes are sometimes submitted to the processes of thematic development employed in symphonic composition, and this resource of music is always used by Wagner with a direct intention to depict some development of character. The system of alteration may be summarised in this rule: if the object represented in the music is one subject to change, its representative theme is liable to development, but otherwise it will keep its original form, unless there is a musical necessity for slight change or the possibility of dramatic suggestion in it. Those familiar with the dramas will recall that in the last scene of "GÖtterdÄmmerung" the Rhine music undergoes a harmonic change eloquently expressive of the mood of the Rhine maidens after the refusal of Siegfried to return the ring. It will be found, too, that any scenic music which is designed for more than one hearing has a deeper purpose than mere pictorial description and is designed as an aid in the creation of a proper mood of receptivity in the auditor, and thus as an assistance to complete understanding.

In the earlier dramas the proportion of scenic music to what may be called expository music is large. One finds many pages of "Lohengrin," for example, which consist of purely scenic writing. The arrival of Lohengrin and the combat in the first act, the approach to the cathedral in the second, the bridal chorus—these, when examined, are found to be pure music of the scene. The motives which are repeated with specified significance are few, and they deal chiefly with the moving forces of the drama, the Grail and the fatal question, the hatred of Ortrud and the knightly power of Lohengrin.

But the early works of Wagner show his musical system in its embryonic state, and, while the study of the scores is from that point of view particularly interesting, for satisfactory illustrations of the method we must go to the later dramas. Here we are constantly confronted with evidence of Wagner's sincerity of purpose, his unflagging endeavour to achieve that organic union of text and music which was so dear to his heart. In "Das Rheingold," for instance, occurs for the first time a theme to be heard often in the subsequent dramas, the theme of the sword. The composer was not content to make a theme of any sort and arbitrarily call it the sword motive. He tried to produce something which should suggest the sword and the heroic uses to which it was to be put, and thus he composed this brilliant and martial theme, intoned by a trumpet:

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Another artistically constructed motive, which may be quoted here, is that representative of the Tarnhelm, the mystic cap which Mime makes for Alberich and which renders the wearer invisible. In this motive Wagner creates the atmosphere of mystery by making the tonality of the music uncertain through the use of the empty "fifth."

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Some of the most effective themes are those which are associated with personalities in their visible aspects, as the fire music, which represents Loge, and the "Ritt-Motiv," or galloping figure, of Kundry in "Parsifal." Motives of this kind Wagner devised with great musical skill, for they impress the mind of the hearer in two ways, bringing before it a part of the pictorial movement of the drama and also representing certain personal attributes, while at the same time they are so made that they readily lend themselves to thematic variation without losing their identity.

The attentive listener to these later dramas of Wagner, then, will find, in the fully developed musical system, voice parts which consist of declamation occasionally rising into the sublimest kind of arioso, without once sacrificing the poetic spirit to any demand of mere musical formalism, and an orchestral accompaniment which is not an accompaniment in the sense of merely affording support to the singer's voice, but is independent and expressive of much that the actors do not utter. This expressiveness is gained by the employment of themes to which a definite meaning has been attached, no matter how arbitrarily, by their association with a picture, an action, a personality, or a thought. This association is made perfectly comprehensible to every listener who bears in mind that the text is the explanation of this music, and its only explanation. The music never exists for its own sake, but is a vital part of the speech of the drama. The orchestra is always an explicator, never a mere support. And here and there we meet with passages of merely descriptive or scenic music, in which not even guiding themes of scenic nature are used. The ultimate purpose of the entire musical scheme is organic union with the text so that the music shall give perfect expression to the drama of emotions which is being enacted, and place the hearer in the proper moods for the reception of it. While all the old musical forms employed in opera are abandoned, Wagner avoids formlessness by the repetition of identified themes. In summing up this important matter let me quote Wagner's own words from "A Communication to My Friends":

"This opera form [the old form] was never of its very nature a form embracing the whole drama, but rather an arbitrary conglomerate of separate smaller forms of song, whose fortuitous concatenation of arias, duos, trios, etc., with choruses and so-called ensemble-pieces, made out the actual edifice of opera. In the poetic fashioning of my stuffs [materials] it was henceforth impossible for me to contemplate a filling of these ready-moulded forms, but solely a bringing of the drama's broader object to the cognisance of the feeling. In the whole course of the drama I saw no possibility of division or demarcation, other than the acts in which the place or time, or the scenes in which the dramatis personÆ change. Moreover the plastic unity of the mythic stuff brought with it this advantage, that, in the arrangement of my scenes, all those minor details which the modern playwright finds so indispensable for the elucidation of involved historical occurrences were quite unnecessary, and the whole strength of the portrayal could be concentrated upon a few weighty and decisive moments of development. Upon the working out of these fewer scenes in each of which a decisive 'Stimmung' [mood] was to be given its full play, I might linger with an exhaustiveness already reckoned for in the original draft; I was not compelled to make shift with mere suggestions, and—for the sake of economy—to hasten on from one suggestion to another; but with needful repose I could display the simple object in the very last connections required to bring it home to the dramatic understanding. Through this natural attribute of the stuff I was not in the least coerced to strain the planning of my scenes into any preconceived conformity with given musical forms, since they dictated of themselves their mode of musical completion. In the ever surer feeling hereof it thus could no more occur to me to rack with wilful outward canons the musical form that sprang self-bidden from the very nature of these scenes, to break its natural mould by violent grafting-in of conventional slips of operatic song. Thus I by no means set out with the fixed purpose of a deliberate iconoclast [FormumÄnderer—lit., changer of forms], to destroy, forsooth, the prevailing operatic forms of aria, duet, etc., but the omission of these forms followed from the very nature of the stuff, with whose intelligible presentment to the feeling through an adequate vehicle I alone had to do....

"Just as the joinery of my individual scenes excluded every alien and unnecessary detail, and led all interest to the dominant Chief-mood, so did the whole building of my drama join itself into one organic unity, whose easily surveyed members were made out by those fewer scenes and situations which set the passing mood: no mood could be permitted to be struck in any one of these scenes that did not stand in a weighty relation to the mood of all the other scenes, so that the development of the moods from out each other, and the constant obviousness of this development, should establish the unity of the drama in its very mode of expression. Each of these Chief-moods, in keeping with the nature of the stuff, must also gain a definite musical expression, which should display itself to the sense of hearing as a definite musical theme. Just as in the progress of the drama the intended climax of a decisory Chief-mood was only to be reached through a development, continuously present to the feeling, of the individual moods already roused, so must the musical expression, which directly influences the physical feeling, necessarily take a decisive share in this development to a climax; and this was brought about quite of itself, in the shape of a characteristic issue of principal themes, that spread itself not over one scene only (as heretofore in separate operatic 'numbers'), but over the whole drama, and that in intimate connection with the poetic aim."

Where Gluck had sought to make music enforce the expression of the sentiment of the text, Wagner aimed to make it the very expression itself, and in following out this purpose he elaborated the system of musical presentation of the content of a drama which carried him entirely away from the beaten paths of opera. It was the radical departure of his system which aroused the opposition of a deep misunderstanding. His contemporaries saw what he had abolished from his works, but could not comprehend the substitute. And even to-day, when the Wagner drama is accepted the world over, there is still a general failure to understand that the leitmotiv system was conceived as the only preservation of necessary musical method in a drama which had banished from its scheme the use of the established operatic forms.

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