My Life, Volume II

by Richard Wagner

  From this time forward my resolve to produce Tristan had to be seriously entertained, as it was written in plain letters in my book of fate. To all these circumstances I was indebted for the continuation of the favourable mood in which I now brought the second act of Siegfried to a close. My daily walks were directed on bright summer afternoons to the peaceful Sihlthal, in whose wooded surroundings I listened long and attentively to the song of the forest birds, and I was astonished to make the acquaintance of entirely new melodies, sung by singers whose forms I could not see and whose names I did not know. In the forest scene of Siegfried I put down, in artistic imitation of nature, as much as I could remember of these airs. At the beginning of August I had carefully sketched the composition of the second act. I was glad I had reserved the third act with the awakening of Brunhilda for the time when I should again be able to go on with the opera, for it seemed to me that all the problems in my work were now happily solved, and that all that remained was to get pure joy out of it.

  As I firmly believed in the wisdom of husbanding my artistic power, I now prepared to write out Tristan. A certain strain was put upon my patience at this point by the arrival of the excellent Ferdinand Prager from London. His visit, in other respects, was a source of genuine pleasure to me, for I was bound to recognise in him a faithful and life-long friend. The only difficulty was, that he laboured under the delusion that he was exceptionally nervous, and that he was persecuted by fate. This was a source of considerable annoyance to me, as with the best will in the world, I could not muster up any sympathy for him. We helped ourselves out of the dilemma by an excursion to Schaffhausen, where I paid my first visit to the famous Rhine Falls, which did not fail to impress me duly.

  About this time the Wesendoncks moved into their villa, which had now been embellished by stucco-workers and upholsterers from Paris. At this point a new phase began in my relations with this family, which was not really important, but nevertheless exercised considerable influence on the outward conduct of my life. We had become so intimate, through being such near neighbours in a country place, that it was impossible to avoid a marked increase in our intimacy if only through meeting one another daily. I had often noticed that Wesendonck, in his straightforward open manner, had shown uneasiness at the way in which I made myself at home in his house. In many things, in the matter of heating and lighting the rooms, and also in the hours appointed for meals, consideration was shown me which seemed to encroach upon his rights as master of the house. It needed a few confidential discussions on the subject to establish an agreement which was half implied and half expressed. This understanding had a tendency, as time wore on, to assume a doubtful significance in the eyes of other people, and necessitated a certain measure of precaution in an intimacy which had now become exceedingly close. These precautions were occasionally the source of great amusement to the two parties who were in the secret. Curiously enough, this closer association with my neighbour coincided with the time when I began to work out my libretto, Tristan und Isolde.

  Robert Franz now arrived in Zurich on a visit. I was delighted by his agreeable personality, and his visit reassured me that no deep significance need be attached to the somewhat strained relations which had sprung up between us since the time when he took up the cudgels for me on the occasion of the production of Lohengrin. The misunderstanding had been chiefly due to the intermeddling of his brother-in-law Heinrich (who had written a pamphlet about me). We played and sang together; he accompanied me in some of his songs, and my compositions for the Nibelungen seemed to please him. But one day, when the Wesendoncks asked him to dinner to meet me, he begged that he might be alone with the family without any other guests, because if I were there he would not attain the importance by which he set so much store. We laughed over this, and I did so the more heartily because I was sometimes quite grateful to be saved the trouble of talking to people so curiously uncommunicative as I found Franz to be. After he left us, he never sent us a word of himself or his doings again.

  When I had almost finished the first act of Tristan, a newly married couple arrived in Zurich, who certainly had a prominent claim on my interest. It was about the beginning of September that Hans von Bulow arrived with his young wife Cosima (a daughter of Liszt's) at the Raben Hotel. I invited them to my little house, so that they might spend the whole time of their stay in Zurich with me, as their visit was mainly on my account.

  We spent the month of September together most pleasantly. In the meanwhile I completed the libretto of Tristan und Isolde, and at the same time Hans made me a fair copy of each act. I read it over, act by act, to my two friends, until at last I was able to get them all together for a private reading, which made a deep impression on the few intimate friends who composed the audience. As Frau Wesendonck appeared to be particularly moved by the last act, I said consolingly that one ought not to grieve over it, as, under any circumstances, in a matter so grave things generally turned out in this way, and Cosima heartily agreed. We also had a good deal of music together, as in Billow I had at last found the right man to play Klindworth's atrocious arrangement of my Nibelungen scores. But the two acts of Siegfried, which had only been written down as rough drafts, were mastered by Hans with such consummate skill that he could play them as if they had really been arranged for the piano. As usual, I took all the singing parts; sometimes we had a few listeners, amongst whom Mme. Wille was the most promising. Cosima listened silently with her head bowed; if pressed for an expression of opinion, she began to cry.

  Towards the end of September my young friends left me to travel back to their destination in Berlin, and begin their married life like good citizens.

  For the time being we had sounded a sort of funeral peal over the Nibelungen by playing so much of it, and it was now completely laid aside. The consequence was, that when later on we took it out of its folio for similar gatherings, it wore a lack-lustre look, and grew ever fainter, as if to remind us of the past. At the beginning of October, however, I at once began to compose Tristan, finishing the first act by the new year, when I was already engaged in orchestrating the prelude. During that time I developed a dreamy, timorous passion for retirement. Work, long walks in all winds and weathers, evenings spent in reading Calderon-such was my mode of life, and if it was disturbed, I was thrown into the deepest state of irritation. My connection with the world confined itself almost entirely to my negotiations with the music-seller Hartel about the publication of Tristan. As I had told this man that, by way of contrast to the immense undertaking of the Nibelungen, I had in my mind a practicable work, which, in its demands upon the producer, confined itself, to all intents and purposes, to the engagement of a few good singers, he showed such keenness to take up my offer that I ventured to ask four hundred louis d'or. Thereupon Hartel answered that I was to read his counter offer, made, in a sealed letter which he enclosed, only on condition that I at once agreed to waive my own demands entirely, as he did not think the work I proposed to write was one which could be produced without difficulties. In the sealed enclosure I found that he offered me only one hundred louis d'or, but he undertook, after a period of five years, to give me a half-share in the proceeds, with the alternative of buying out my rights for another hundred louis d'or. With these terms I had to comply, and soon set to work to orchestrate the first act, so as to let the engraver have one batch of sheets at a time.

  Besides this, I was interested at that time in the expected crisis of the American money market in the month of November, the consequences of which, during a few fatal weeks, threatened to endanger the whole of my friend Wesendonck's fortune. I remember that the impending catastrophe was borne with great dignity by those who were likely to be its victims; still the possibility of having to sell their house, their grounds, and their horses cast an unavoidable gloom over our evening meetings; and, after a while, Wesendonck went away to make arrangements with various foreign bankers.

  During that time I spent the mornings in my house composing Tristan, and ev
ery evening we used to read Calderon, which made a deep and permanent impression upon me, for I had become fairly familiar with Spanish dramatic literature, thanks to Schack. At last the dreaded American crisis happily blew over, and it was soon apparent that Wesendonck's fortune had considerably increased. Again, during the winter evenings, I read Tristan aloud to a wider circle of friends. Gottfried Keller was pleased with the compact form of the whole, which really contained only three full scenes. Semper, however, was very angry about it: he objected that I took everything too seriously, and said that the charm in the artistic construction of such material consisted in the fact that the tragic element was broken up in such a way that one could extract enjoyment even from its most affecting parts. That was just what pleased him in Mozart's Don Juan, one met the tragic types there, as if at a masquerade, where even the domino was preferable to the plain character. I admitted that I should get on much more comfortably if I took life more seriously and art more lightly, but for the present I intended to let the opposite relations prevail.

  As a matter of fact people shook their heads. After I had sketched the first act of the composition, and had developed the character of my musical production more precisely. I thought with a peculiar smile of my first idea of writing this work as a sort of Italian opera, and I became less anxious at the absence of news from Brazil. On the other hand, my attention was particularly drawn at the end of this year to what was going on in Paris in regard to my operas. A young author from that city wrote asking me to entrust him with the translation of my Tannhauser, as the manager of the Theatre Lyrique, M. Carvalho, was taking steps to produce that opera in Paris. I was alarmed at this, as I was afraid that the copyright of my works had not been secured in France, and that they might dispose of them there at their own sweet will. To this I most strongly objected. I was well aware how this undertaking would be carried out, from an account I had read a short time before of the performance of Weber's Euryanthe at that very Theatre Lyrique, and of the objectionable elaborations or rather mutilations which had been effected for the purposes of production. As Liszt's elder daughter Blandine had recently married the famous lawyer E. Ollivier, and I could consequently rely on substantial help from them, I made up my mind to go to Paris for a week, and look after the matter about which I had been approached, and, at any rate, secure my author's rights legally. In addition to this I was in a very melancholy state of mind, to which overwork and constant occupation on the kind of task that Semper had, perhaps with justice, denounced as being too serious, had contributed by reason of the strain on my mental powers.

  If I remember rightly, I gave evidence of this state of mind (which curiously enough led me to despise all worldly cares) in a letter I wrote to my old friend Alwine Frommann on New Year's Eve 1857.

  With the beginning of the new year 1858 the necessity for a break in my work became so manifest, that I positively dreaded beginning the instrumentation of the first act of Tristan und Isolde, until I had allowed myself the trip for which I longed. For at that moment, unfortunately, neither Zurich, nor my home, nor the company of my friends afforded me any relaxation.

  Even the agreeable and immediate proximity of the Wesendonck family increased my discomfort, for it was really intolerable to me to devote all my evenings to conversations and entertainments in which my kind friend Otto Wesendonck felt obliged to take as much part as myself and the rest of us. His apprehension that everything in his house would very soon follow my lead instead of his, gave him that peculiar aggressiveness with which a man who believes himself neglected interpolates himself like an extinguisher into every conversation carried on in his presence.

  All this soon became oppressive and irksome to me, and no one who did not realise my condition, and show signs of sympathising with it, could excite my interest, and even then it was a very languid one. So I made up my mind in the middle of the severe winter weather, and notwithstanding the fact that for the present I was quite unprovided with the necessary means, and was consequently obliged to take all sorts of tiresome precautions, to carry out my excursion to Paris. I felt a growing presentiment that I was going away never to return. I reached Strasburg on the 15th of January, too much upset to travel any further just then. From there I wrote to Eduard Devrient at Karlsruhe, asking him to request the Grand Duke to send an adjutant to meet me at Kehl on my return from Paris, to accompany me on a visit to Karlsruhe, as I particularly wanted to become acquainted with the artists who were to sing in Tristan. A little later I was taken to task by Eduard Devrient for my impertinence in expecting to have grand- ducal adjutants at my disposal, from which I gathered that he had attributed my request to a desire for some mark of honour, whereas my idea had been that that was the only possible way in which I, a political outlaw, could venture to visit Karlsruhe, though my object was a purely professional one. I could not help smiling at this strange misconception, but I was also startled at this proof of shallowness in my old friend, and began to wonder what he might do next.

  I was trudging wearily along in the twilight through the public promenade of Strasburg, to restore my overwrought nerves, when I was suddenly taken aback by seeing on a theatre poster the word TANNHAUSER. Looking at the bill more closely, I saw that it was the Overture to Tannhauser that was to be given as a prelude to a French play. The exact meaning of this I did not quite understand, but of course I took my seat in the theatre, which was very empty. The orchestra, looking all the larger from contrast with the empty house, was assembled in a huge space and was a very strong one. The rendering given of my overture under the conductor's baton was really a very good one.

  As I was sitting rather near the front in the stalls, I was recognised by the man who was playing the kettledrum, as he had taken part in my Zurich performances in 1853. The news of my presence spread like wildfire through the whole orchestra until it reached the ears of the conductor, and led to great excitement. The small audience, who had evidently put in appearance simply on account of the French play, and who were not at all inclined to pay any particular attention to the overture, were very much astonished when, at the conclusion of the overture, the conductor and the whole orchestra turned round in the direction of my stall, and gave vent to enthusiastic applause, which I had to acknowledge with a bow. All eyes followed me eagerly as I left the hall after this scene, to pay my respects to the conductor. It was Herr Hasselmann, a native of Strasburg, and apparently a very good-natured, amiable fellow. He accompanied me to my hotel and, amongst other things, told me the circumstances connected with the performance of my overture. These somewhat surprised me. According to the terms of a legacy left by a wealthy citizen of Strasburg, a great lover of music, who had already contributed very largely to the building of the theatre, the orchestra, whose flourishing condition was due to his beneficence, had to give, during the usual theatrical performances, one of the greater instrumental works with a full band once a week. This time, as it happened, it was the turn for the overture to Tannhauser. The feeling that was uppermost in my mind was one of envy that Strasburg should have produced a citizen whose like had never seen the light of day in any of the towns in which I had been connected with music, and more particularly Zurich.