RICHARD WAGXER. 



139 



dream, while his soul lives and moves only in the 

 ideal sphere of the varied and intense passions 

 which are being played out before him. 



III. 



While these perceptions and aims were slow- 

 ly maturing in him, Wagner found himself con- 

 stantly at war with his age and his surround- 

 ings. 



At sixteen, he had resolved to devote himself 

 to music, finding in it the ineffable expression for 

 emotions otherwise mainly inexpressible. Musi- 

 cal notes and intervals were to him radiant forms 

 and flaming ministers. Mozart taught him that 

 exquisite certainty of touch which selects exactly 

 the right notes to express a given musical idea. 

 Weber taught him the secret of pure melody, 

 how to stamp with an indelible type a given char- 

 acter, as in the return of the Samiel motive in 

 " Der Freischiitz ; " he also perceived in that 

 opera the superiority of legend and popular myth, 

 as on the Greek stage, to present the universal 

 and eternal aspects of human life in their most 

 pronounced and ideal forms. Beethoven sup- 

 plied him with the mighty orchestra, capable of 

 holding in suspension an immense crowd of emo- 

 tions, and of manipulating the interior and com- 

 plex feelings with the instantaneous and infallible 

 power of a magician's wand. Schubert taught 

 him the freedom of song — Chopin the magic elas- 

 ticity of chords, Spohr the subtile properties of 

 the chromatic scale — and even Meyerbeer re- 

 vealed to him the possibilities of stage-effect 

 through the grand opera. Shakespeare, Goethe, 

 and Schiller, suggested the kind of language in 

 which such dramas as " Lohengrin " and " Rhein- 

 gold " might be written ; while Madame Schrbder- 

 Devrient revealed to him what a woman might 

 accomplish in the stage presentation of ideal pas- 

 sion with such a part as Elsa in " Lohengrin " or 

 Brunhild in " Walkiire." 



But the immediate result of this, as I have 

 said, was not promising. Contrary to the advice 

 of his friends, he had thrown himself, heart and 

 soul, into the study of music as a profession. 

 Under the Cantor Weinlig, at Leipsic, and while 

 at the university, he produced an overture and 

 symphony, which were played and not unfavor- 

 ably received at the Gewandhaus ; but his early 

 work, with here and there an exceptional trait in 

 harmony, was nothing but a pale copy of Mozart, 

 as may be seen from a poor little piano sonata 

 lately republished by Breitkopf. 



His health now broke down. He was twenty 

 years old (1833), and he went to his brother, a 



professor of music at Wiirzburg, where he staid 

 a year, at the end of which time he was appointed 

 musical director at the Magdeburg Theatre, where, 

 under the combined influence of Weber and Beet- 

 hoven, he produced two operas — " The Fairies " 

 and " The Novice of Palermo" — neither of which 

 succeeded. He left his place in disgust, and ob- 

 tained another post at the Konigsberg Theatre. 

 There he married an actress, a good creature, 

 who, without being much to blame, does not seem 

 to have materially increased his happiness, but 

 who decidedly shared the opinion of his friends 

 that the composition of " pot-boilers " was su- 

 perior to the pursuit of the ideal. The ideal, 

 however, haunted Wagner, and — poverty. 



In 1836 he left with Mina for Riga, on the 

 shores of the Baltic, and there, as chef cVorchcstre 

 at the theatre, he really appears to have enjoyed 

 studying the operas of Mehul, Spontiui, Auber, 

 and Berlioz ; for, while suffering what he describes 

 as a dull, gnawing pain at the frequent irrele- 

 vance of the sentiment to the music, the nobler 

 correspondences and beautiful inspirations gave 

 him far-off glimpses of that musical drama to 

 which he even now dimly aspired. 



In the midst of his routine duties Bulwer's 

 novel, " Kienzi," struck his imagination. There, 

 as on a large and classic stage, was portrayed 

 that eternal revolt of the human spirit against 

 tyranny, routine, selfishness, and corruption, of 

 which the Polish insurrection of 1831 and the 

 Revolution of July were the modern echoes. Ri- 

 enzi, a tribune of the people, dreaming of the old 

 austere republic, in the midst of corrupt papal 

 Rome — a noble heart, a powerful will at war with 

 a brutal and vulgar age, supported, cheered by 

 the enthusiasm of a devoted and patriotic sister 

 — raised by a wave of popularity to the high- 

 est summit of human power, then hurled down 

 by the papal anathema, betrayed by a mean and 

 cowering aristocracy, banished by the mob that 

 had so lately hailed him as a deliverer, and at 

 last falling by a treacherous hand upon the 

 charred and crumbling ashes of his own home- 

 stead, the last great tribune of Rome ! — here was 

 a subject with immense outlines, full of situations 

 in which the greatest breadth might be joined to 

 the most detailed inflections of feeling. In it 

 Wagner, while not departing avowedly from the 

 form of* the grand opera then in vogue at Paris, 

 has in fact burst the boundaries. "Rienzi"is 

 already the work of an independent master ; it is 

 at least prophetic of " Lohengrin " and " Tri- 

 stan," while comparing favorably in pure melody 

 and sensational effects with any of the current 



