Wagner as I Knew Him

If an intimacy, an uninterrupted friendship, of close upon half a century during which early associations, ambitions, failures, successes, and their results were frankly discussed, entitles one to speak with authority on Richard Wagner, the man, the artist, his mental workings, and the doctrine he strove to preach, then am I fully entitled so to speak of my late friend.

To vindicate Wagner in all things is not my intention. He was but mortal, and no ordinary mortal, and had his failings, which will be fearlessly dealt with. My sole purpose is to set Richard Wagner before the world as I knew him; to help to an honest understanding of the man and his motives as he so often laid them bare to me; and I unhesitatingly affirm that, when seen in his true character, many a hostile, plausible, and unsparing criticism, begotten of inadequate knowledge or malice, will shrivel and crumble away when exposed to the sunlight of truth.

The daring originality of Wagner’s work could not help provoking violent opposition. Revolution in art as in aught else has ever been wedded to storm and tumult.

Of all things, Wagner was a thinker. The plot, construction, and logical development of his dramas, the employment of those wondrous character-descriptive tone-themes, their marvellous combination, his ten volumes of serious matter, especially “The Work and Mission of my Life,” emphatically testify to his deliberate studied thinking, and friend and foe alike readily acknowledge the originality of his thought.

Here then entered the art world, in the person of Richard Wagner, a quite natural subject for discussion. Here was a thinker, an original thinker, and Carlyle says that “the great event, parent of all others, in every epoch of the world, is the arrival of a thinker, an original thinker.” No matter for marvel, then, that the air thickened with criticism as soon as the Thinker proclaimed himself.

The persistency and vigour with which Wagner pursued the end,—an end to which, primarily, he was unconsciously impelled by instinctive genius,—the emphatic enforcement of the Gospel it was the sole purpose of his thinking manhood to inculcate, led him to reject worldly advancement, to endure painful privation, to utter fierce denunciation against pseudo-prophets, and to be the victim of malignant insult and scornful vituperation. And why? Because his mission was to preach Truth.

Wagner was “terribly in earnest.” His earnestness forces itself home to us through all his works; and in his strenuous striving to accomplish his task, he involuntarily said and did things seemingly opposed to the very principles he had so dogmatically enunciated. But on investigating the why of such apparent contradictions, it will be found that they are but paradoxical after all, and that never has Wagner swerved from the direct pursuit of his ideal. Thus he says, “I had a dislike, nay, a positive contempt, for the stage, its rouge and tawdry tinsel,” and yet within its precincts he was spell-bound. He was chained to it by indissoluble links. It was the pulpit from which he was to expound his gospel. Again, he accepted from friends the most reckless sacrifices without the simplest acknowledgment or gratitude, yet it was not ingratitude as is commonly understood; he accepted the service not as done to himself, but for the glorification of true art, and in that consummation he felt they were richly recompensed. He, when he felt it his duty to speak plainly, spared the feelings of none by an incisive criticism which cut to the core, and yet an over-sensitiveness made him writhe under the slightest censure.

Towards Jews and Judaism he had a most pronounced antipathy, and yet this did not prevent him from numbering many Hebrews among his most devoted friends. Pursued with the wildest ambition, he steadfastly refused all proffered titles and decorations. He formulated most positive rules for the music-drama, and then referring to “Tristan and Isolde,” states: “There I entirely forgot all theory, and became conscious how far I had gone beyond my own system.”[1] With Meyerbeer in view, he emphatically insisted that after sixty no composer should write, as being incapacitated by age and consequent failure of brain power, and then when long past this period he not only writes one of his greatest works, but when seventy and within the shadow of death, was engaged upon another of engrossing interest, viz. on the Hindoo religion. Lastly, whilst vehemently protesting the inseparability of his music from its related stage representation and scenic accessories, compelled by fate, he traversed Europe from London to St. Petersburg to produce in the concert room orchestral excerpts from the very works upon whose inviolability he had in such unequivocal terms insisted,—selections too, though arranged by himself, which give but the most incomplete conception of the dramas themselves.

This seeming jarring between theory and practice in so powerful a thinker requires explanation, and in due course I shall exhaustively treat the same.

Wagner and I were born in the same town, Leipzic, and within two years of each other. This was a bond of friendship between us never severed, Wagner ever fondly delighting to talk about his early surroundings and associations. His references to Leipzic and prominent local characters were coloured with strong affection, and to discuss with one who could reciprocate his deep love for the charmed city of his birth, was for him a certain source of happiness.

Wagner’s first music-master, properly so called, was Cantor Weinlig of Leipzic. From him he received his first serious theoretical instruction. Weinlig, too, was well known to me. He was an intimate friend of my father, Henry Aloysius Praeger, director of the Stadttheater and conductor of the famous Gewandhaus concerts, the latter post being subsequently filled by Mendelssohn among other celebrities. Between Weinlig and my father, whom the history of music has celebrated as a violinist of exceptional skill and as a sound contrapuntist, constant communications passed, and I was very often the bearer of such.

Common points of interest like this—striking Leipzic individualities, the house at Gohlis, a suburb of Leipzic where poor Schiller spent part of his time, the masters of St. Nicolas’ School, where we both attended, though at different periods—I could multiply without end, each topic of absorbing interest to us both, and productive of much mutual expansion of the heart, but I will here refer to one only—that connected with Carl Maria von Weber.

“Der FreischÜtz” was first performed at Dresden, the composer conducting, on the 22d January, 1822. Wagner, then in his ninth year, was living at Dresden with his family. In his letter to Frederick Villot, he says of Weber: “His melodies filled me with an earnestness, which came to me as a bright vision from above. His personality attracted me with enthusiastic fascination; from him I received my first musical baptism. His death in a distant land filled my childish heart with sorrowful awe.” “Der FreischÜtz” was almost immediately produced at Leipzic, and Weber came to Leipzic personally to supervise the rehearsals and to acquaint my father, then the conductor of the theatre, as to the special reading of certain parts. The work excited the utmost enthusiasm in Leipzic, and was performed there innumerable times. I, the son of the conductor, having free entry to the theatre, went nightly, and acquired thus early a thoroughly intimate acquaintance with the work, such as Wagner also had gained by his frequent visits to the Dresden theatre through his family’s connection with the stage. In after-life we found that Weber and his works had exercised over both of us the same fascination. In 1844, the remains of the loved idol, Weber, were removed from Moorfields Chapel, London, to Dresden. At that time I was residing in London, and, in conjunction with Max von Weber, the composer’s eldest son, and others, obtained the necessary authority and carried out the removal. Wagner was in Germany. There he received the body, and on its final interment pronounced the funeral oration over the adored artist.

In this country, where I have now lived for an unbroken period of fifty-one years, I was Wagner’s first and sole champion, and, notwithstanding all the calumny with which he was persistently assailed (which even now has not entirely ceased), stood firmly by him.

It was through my sole exertions that the Philharmonic Society in 1855 offered Wagner the post of conductor. His acceptance and retention of the post for one season are now matters of history.

Wagner returned to London in 1877 to conduct the “Wagner Festival” concerts at the Albert Hall. As his sixty-fourth birthday fell during these concerts, some ardent friends promoted a banquet in his honour at the Cannon Street Hotel on the 23d May. To that banquet I was invited, and great was my amazement when Wagner, the applauded of all, spontaneously and without the least hint to me, warmly and affectionately said:—

“It is now twenty-two years ago since I came to this country, unacknowledged as a composer and attacked on all sides by a hostile press. Then I had but one friend, one support, one who acknowledged and boldly defended me, one who has clung to me ever since with unchanging affection; this is my friend Ferdinand Praeger.”

My Lord, I have felt it desirable to address these preliminary remarks to you as indicative of the manner in which I propose to treat my friend’s life and work. Wagner was extremely voluble, and, with his intimate friends, most unreserved. He was a man of strong affections and strong memory, and to those he loved he freely spoke of those whom he loved, and thus I believe I am the sole recipient of many of his early impressions and reminiscences, of his thoughts and ambitions in after-life. Therefore shall I tell the story of his life and work, as he made me see it and as I knew him, keeping back nothing, believing as I do that the world has a right to know how its great men live: their lives are its lawful inheritance.

It is with deep affection that I undertake a work prompted by your Lordship’s love for the true in art, and it is to you that I dedicate the result of my labour.

Ferdinand Praeger.

London, 15th June, 1885.

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