I thought of the decree he gave out to check the vagaries of the Schlegels, and to reinstate classic art in the appreciation of his subjects, of which Heine says: “After that, there was no more question of the romantic school or of the classic school, but of Goethe, and always of Goethe!” And the quotation from Heine recalled his interview with the Jupiter of Weimar, how the majestic presence of the god drove out from his memory all his prepared speech, and he could but stammer a praise of the plums that grew on the way-side from Jena.
Happy thoughts, one would suppose; yet they filled me with an invincible melancholy as I sat in the park at Weimar, and looked across the meadow space to Goethe’s garden-house. What right had I to be unhappy, who had not the excuse of greatness?
I returned to the table d’hôte, and found an antidote to any thoughts of past Weimar in viewing the reign that has succeeded to Goethe’s. Perhaps to a thinking man the folly that surrounds him is more mournful than the wisdom of the past, but there is at times something cheering in folly when you are saddened by memories. A farce follows a tragedy, and you are not so much shocked; you are relieved from lamenting the state of South Italy when you hear Mr. Bowyer’s comments on it. Thus, when I found myself at the table d’hôte, in the midst of a band of zukunftists, I was cheered, and listened without bitterness. Perhaps you do not know the meaning of this German word; it maybe literally translated “futurists,” and is the name applied to those gentlemen who cultivate the music of the future. This grandiloquent phrase has been given to a school of music intended to supersede Mozart. Its prophet-in-chief is Richard Wagner; one of its heads is Franz Liszt, the pianist, Kapellmeister at Weimar. I fear it may be said of the name of this school, as it was said of some poet’s Epistle to Posterity, that it is never likely to reach its address; and of its pretensions to supersede Mozart, what Porson said of Southey’s poems, that they would be read when Homer and Milton were forgotten, but not till then.
Wagner, the chief prophet, is a better poet than musician. He writes his own libretti, and very well; they merely need setting to music to be excellent operas. The reforms he desires to introduce on the lyric stage are more connected with the libretto than with the partition. He has succeeded in reforming the words, but another school will be needed to reform his music. For, however many reforms music can bear, there is one it cannot bear, the omission of tune. Difficulty of comprehension is but a slight impediment to the success of a musician, so long as he conceals it beneath melody. But when he despises melody, and is not to be understood, he appeals to that limited class whose appreciation is like St. Augustine’s faith. Credo, quia impossibile, is the original of Tadmire, because it is unintelligible.
Of Wagner’s operas I have only a limited acquaintance with one, Tannhäuser, at one time considered his ultimatum, but now almost superseded. Twice I have tried to hear this opera; the first time I sat out two acts, the second time I could only sit out one. Its story is a popular legend of Germany, telling how Tannhäuser, a knight and minstrel, was decoyed by a female devil, once a goddess, and still named Venus, to spend a year with her in her enchanted hill. On returning to life none would speak with him, so great was his crime, and he had to go to Rome to ask absolution from the Pope. But the Pope, on hearing the enormity of his sin, refused him absolution, drove him out of Rome, and he returned to the enchanted hill to pass the rest of his life with Venus. This is the legend which the reader will find in Heine’s work, “De L’Allemagne,” or in “Lewes’s Life of Goethe.”
The opera was to be performed that night at Weimar, and my neighbours at the table d’hôte held themselves in readiness to applaud it. One was a Russian, on his way to England, who had already preached the gospel of Wagner in his own land. He boasted that he had set the overture to Tannhauser for four pianos and sixteen hands. As the said overture is remarkable for the pain it gives the nerves when performed by a full orchestra, I should be loth to hear eight musicians of the future banging it out on four pianos. The rest of their conversation was in the same vein, speaking with bated breath of Wagner and Liszt, with occasional depreciation of greater names. It was not without reluctance that I paid my two shillings for a stall at the theatre. I had a great desire to see the stage on which so many of Goethe’s and Schiller’s works had been performed, the theatre of which Goethe was manager; but I had an idea that this theatre was a building subsequent to their time, erected on the ruins of theirs. But putting this out of the question, I wanted to have a glimpse at the music of the future in its chief stronghold.
The difference between North and South Germany, so puzzling to politicians, is nowhere more apparent than in their music. The South German music is considerably qualified by the neighbouring influences of Italy, and expresses sentiment if not passion; the North German is confined by rules, and unless acted upon by some peculiarity in the composer’s character, is pedantic. Melody is far more an object with South Germany, though in search of it they almost abandon the higher aims of music. Compare the fresh melody of Mozart and Haydn in their symphonies with the correct but colder symphonies of Mendelssohn; see how Beethoven was influenced by his life in Vienna. Wagner is almost universally scouted in South Germany. It is in the North that his influence prevails. His disciples would say with Voltaire:
C’est du Nord aujourd’hui que nous vient la lumière.
