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Page 31
Perhaps I have given the drama some of the credit that should go to
the music; and at least there is not a dramatic situation which the
music does not immeasurably increase in power. But indeed the two are
inseparable. The music creates the mood and holds the spectator to it
so that the true significance of the dramatic situation cannot fail
to be felt; while the dramatic situation makes the highest, most
extravagant flights of the music quite intelligible, reasonable. It
cannot be said that the music exists for the sake of the drama any
more than the drama exists for the music: the drama lies in the music,
the music is latent in the drama. But to the music the wild atmosphere
of the beginning of the first act is certainly due; and though I have
said that possibly "Tristan" might bear playing without the music, it
must be admitted that it is hard to think of the fifth scene without
that tremendous entrance passage--that passage so tremendous that even
Jean de Reszke dare hardly face it. To the music also the passion and
fervent heat of the second act are due, and the thunderous atmosphere,
the sense of impending fate, in the last, and the miraculous sweetness
and intensity of Tristan's death-music, and the sublime pathos of
Isolda's lament. Since Mozart wrote those creeping chromatic chords in
the scene following the death of the Commendatore in "Don Giovanni,"
nothing so solemn and still, so full of the pathetic majesty of death,
as the passage following the words "with Tristan true to perish" has
been written. This is perhaps Wagner's greatest piece of music; and
certainly his loveliest is Tristan's description of the ship sailing
over the ocean with Isolda, where the gently swaying figure of the
horns, taken from one of the love-themes, and the delicious melody
given to the voice, go to make an effect of richness and tenderness
which can never be forgotten. The opening of the huge duet is as a
blaze of fire which cannot be subdued; and when at last it does
subside and a quieter mood prevails we get a long series of voluptuous
tunes the like of which were never heard before, and will not be heard
again, one thinks, for a thousand years to come. And in the strangest
contrast to these is the earlier part of the third act, where the very
depths of the human spirit are revealed, where we are taken into the
darkness and stand with Tristan before the gates of death. But indeed
all the music of "Tristan" is miraculous in its sweetness, splendour,
and strength; and yet one scarcely thinks of these qualities at the
moment, so entirely do they seem to be hidden by its poignant
expressiveness. As I have said, it seems to enter the mind as emotion
rather than as music, so penetrating is it, so instantaneous in its
appeal. There never was music poured out at so white a white heat; it
is music written in the most modern, most pungent, and raciest
vernacular, with utter impatience of style, of writing merely in an
approved manner. It is beyond criticism. It is possible to love it as
I do; it is possible to hate it as Nietzsche did; but while this
century lasts, it will be impossible to appreciate it sufficiently to
wish to criticise it and yet preserve one's critical judgment with
steadiness enough to do it.
"SIEGFRIED"
In all Wagner's music-plays there is shown an astonishing
appreciation of the value and effect of scenery and of all the changes
of weather and of skies and waters, not only as a background to his
drama but as a means of making that drama clearer, of getting
completer and intenser expression of the emotions for which the
persons in the drama stand. The device is not so largely used in
"Tristan" as in the other music-plays, yet the drama is enormously
assisted by it. In the "Ring" it is used to such an extent that the
first thing that must strike everyone is the series of gorgeously
coloured pictures afforded by each of the four plays. For instance, no
one can ever forget the opening of "The Valkyrie"--the inside of
Hunding's house built round the tree, the half-dead fire flickering,
while we listen to the steady roar of the night wind as the tempest
rushes angrily through the forest--nor the scene that follows, when
through the open door we see all the splendours of the fresh spring
moonlight gleaming on the green leaves still dripping with cold
raindrops. The terror and excitement of the second act are vastly
increased by the storm of thunder and lightning that rages while
Siegmund and Hunding fight. A great part of the effect of the third
act is due to the storm that howls and shrieks at the beginning and
gradually subsides, giving way to the soft translucent twilight, that
in turn gives way to the clear spring night with the dark blue sky
through which the yellow flames presently shoot, cutting off
Br�nnhilde from the busy world. The same pictorial device is used
throughout "Siegfried" with results just as magnificent in their way;
though the way is a very different one. The drama of "The Valkyrie" is
tragedy--chiefly Wotan's tragedy (the relinquishing first of Siegmund,
and his hope in Siegmund, then of Br�nnhilde)--but incidentally the
tragedy of Siegmund's life and his death, of Siegmund's loneliness and
of Br�nnhilde's downfall; and at least one of the scenic effects--the
fire at the end--was thrown in to relieve the pervading gloom, and in
obedience to Wagner's acute sense of the wild beauty of the old
legend, rather than to illustrate and assist the drama. It is sheer
spectacle, but how magnificent compared with that older type of
spectacle which chiefly consisted of brass bands and ladies
insufficiently clothed! "Siegfried," on the other hand, contains no
tragedy save the destruction of a little vermin. It is the most
glorious assertion ever made of the joy and splendour and infinite
beauty to be found in life by those who possess the courage to go
through it in their own way, and have the overflowing vitality and
strength to create their own world as they go. Siegfried is the
embodiment of the divine energy that makes life worth living; and in
the scenery, as in the tale and the music of the opera, nothing is
left out that could help to give us a vivid and lasting impression of
the beauty, freshness, strangeness, and endless interest of life. Take
the first scene--the cave with the dull red forge--fires smouldering
in the black darkness, and the tools of the smith's trade scattered
about, and, seen through the mouth of the cave, all the blazing
colours of the sunlit forest; or again the second--the darkness, then
the dawn and the sunrise, and lastly the full glory of the summer day
near Fafner's hole in a mysterious haunted corner of the forest; or
the third--a far-away nook in the hills, where the spirit of the earth
slumbers everlastingly; or the final scene--the calm morning on
Br�nnhilde's fell, the flames fallen, and all things transfigured and
made remote by the enchantment of lingering mists,--these scenes form
a background for the dramatic action such as no composer dreamed of
before, nor will dream of again until we cease to dwell in dusty stone
cities and learn once again to know nature and her greatest moods as
our forefathers knew them. Had Wagner not lived in Switzerland and
gone his daily walks amongst the mountains, the "Ring" might have been
written; but certainly it would have been written very differently,
and probably not half so well.
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