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Page 32
I have so often insisted on the pictorial power of Wagner's music,
that, save for one quality of the pictures in the "Ring," and
especially in "Siegfried," it would be unnecessary to say more about
it now. That quality is their old-world atmosphere, their power of
filling us with a sense of the old time before us. When the fire plays
round Br�nnhilde's fell--Hinde Fell, Morris calls it--lighting the icy
tops of the farthest hills, or when Mime and Alberich squabble in the
dark of early morning at the mouth of Fafner's hole, or again when the
Wanderer comes in and scarifies Mime out of his wits, we are taken
back to the remotest and dimmest past, to the beginnings of time, to a
time that never existed save in the imagination of our forebears. This
may be partly the result of our unconscious perception of the fact
that these things never happen nowadays, and partly the result of our
having been familiar with the story of Br�nnhilde and the gods since
earliest boyhood; but it is in the main due to Wagner's intense
historical sense, his sense of the past, and to his unapproached power
of expressing in music any feeling or combination of feelings he
experienced. So cunningly do music and scenery work together that we
credit the one with what the other has done; but, wonderful though the
pictures of "Siegfried" are, there cannot be a doubt that the
atmosphere we discover in them reaches us through the ear from the
orchestra. Besides giving us a series of singularly apposite and
significant pictures, Wagner has reproduced the very breath and colour
of the old sagas; he has re-created the atmosphere of a time that
never was; and it is this remote atmosphere which lends to
"Siegfried" and all the "Ring" a great part of their enchantment.
Fancy what it might have been, this long exposition of sheer
Schopenhauerism in three dramas and a fore-play! imagine what Parry or
Stanford or Mackenzie would have made of it! And then think of what
the "Ring" actually is, and especially of the splendour and weirdness
of some parts the "dulness" of which moves dull people to dull
grumbling. For example, a great many persons share Mime's wish for the
Wanderer to go off almost as soon as he comes on, "else no Wanderer
can he be called." They tell us that this scene breaks the action,
neglecting the trifling fact that were it omitted the remainder of the
act would be inconsequent nonsense, only worthy to rank with the
librettos of English musical critics, and that the truth happens to be
that nearly the whole of the subsequent drama grows out of it. In
itself it is a scene of peculiar power, charged to overflowing with
the essence of the Scandinavian legends. The notion of the god,
"one-eyed and seeming ancient," wandering by night through the wild
woods, clad in his dark blue robe, calling in here and there and
creating consternation in the circle gathered round the hearth, is one
of the most poetic to be found in the Northern mythology; and the
music which Wagner has set to his entry and his conversation cannot be
matched for unearthliness unless you turn to the Statue music in "Don
Giovanni," where you find unearthliness of a very different sort. The
scene with Erda in the mountains is even more wonderful, so laden is
the music with the Scandinavian emotional sense of the impenetrable
mystery of things. The scene between Mime and Alberich, or Alberich
and the Wanderer, gives us the old horror of the creeping maleficent
things that crawled by night about the brooks and rock-holes. It is
true this last will bear cutting a little; for Wagner being a German,
but having, what is uncommon in the German, an acute sense of balance
of form, always tried to get balance by lengthening parts which were
already long enough, in preference to cutting parts that were already
too long. Hence much padding, which a later generation will ruthlessly
amputate.
All these things are the accessories, the environment, of the
principal figure; and their presence is justified by their beauty,
significance, and interest, and also by their being necessary for the
development of the larger drama of the whole "Ring." But in following
"Siegfried" that larger drama cannot altogether be kept in mind: it is
the hero that counts first, and everything else is accessory merely to
him. That Wagner, in spite of his preoccupation with the tragedy of
Wotan, should have accomplished this, proves how wonderful and how
true an artist he was. Siegfried is the incarnation, as I have said,
of the divine energy which enables one to make the world rich with
things that delight the soul; he is Wagner's healthiest, sanest,
perhaps most beautiful creation; he is certainly the only male in all
Wagner's dramas who is never in any danger of becoming for ever so
brief a moment a bore, whose view of life is always so fresh and novel
and at the same time so essentially human that he interests us both in
himself and in the world we see through his eyes. Never had an actor
such opportunities as here. The entry with the bear exhibits the
animal strength and spirits of the man, and the inquiries about his
parents, his purely human feeling; his temper with Mime the
unsophisticated boy's petulant intolerance of the mean and ugly; the
forging of the sword the coming power and determination of manhood.
The killing of the dragon is unavoidably rather ridiculous; but the
scene with the bird is fascinating by its naturalness and simplicity
as well as its tenderness and sheer sweetness. Finally, after the
scene with the Wanderer, the scene of the awakening of Br�nnhilde
affords an opportunity for love-making, and it is love-making of so
unusual a sort that one does not feel it to be an anti-climax after
all the big things that have gone before. In fact, not even Tristan
has things quite so much to himself, nor is given the opportunity of
expressing so many phases of emotion and character. And the music
Siegfried has to sing is the richest, most copious stream of melody
ever given to one artist; in any one scene there is melody enough to
have made the fortune of Verdi or any other Italian composer who
wrote tunes for the tenor and prima donna; not even Mozart could have
poured out a greater wealth of tune--tune everlastingly varying with
the mood of the drama. Every scene provides a heap of smaller tunes,
and then there are such big ones as the Forge song, Siegfried's
meditation in the forest and the conversation with the bird, and the
awakening of Br�nnhilde--every one absolutely new and tremulous with
intense life.
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