Читать книгу Studies in the Wagnerian Drama - Henry Edward Krehbiel - Страница 5

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Thus much for the first manifestation of the spirit which is exemplified in the Art-work of Richard Wagner. I have laid stress upon the Greek tragedy simply because it was the direct inspiration of the second manifestation, out of which the Art-work which Wagner reformed was evolved, through steps that are easily followed by students of modern musical history. Wherever we turn we find the genesis of the drama to be the same. I might have chosen the Hindu drama as a starting-point, and found in it the same intimate association of poetry, music, and action that characterized Greek tragedy. Or I might have pointed to the Chinese drama, and invited you to a study of that association as it has existed for thousands of years, and still exists in the theatres of the Great Pure Kingdom.

Now for the second manifestation. Towards the close of the sixteenth century dissatisfaction with the inelastic artificiality of polite music took possession of a body of scholars and musical amateurs who were in the habit of meeting for learned discussion in the house of Giovanni Bardi, Count Vernio, in Florence. Their discussions led them to formulate two aims: First, To give emotional expressiveness to music by putting aside polyphony, and inventing what is called the monodic style. They wrote solos for the voice with harmonic support for the instruments in the shape of chords. Second, They tried to revive the Greek tragedies, or, rather, to imitate them in new compositions, to which they applied their monodic music. They conceived the purpose of music to be to heighten the expressiveness of poetry, and held the play to be "the thing." To "Euridice," the first drama of the new style which was published, the composer of the music, Jacopo Peri, wrote a preface, in which he said that he had been convinced by a study of the ancients that though their dramatic declamation may not have risen to song, it was yet musically colored. This exaltation of speech he evidently thought had its basis in those variations of pitch, dynamic intensity, and vocal quality which Herbert Spencer, in his essay on the "Origin and Function of Music," shows to be the physiological results of variations of feeling, all feelings being muscular stimuli. Peri made careful observations of the inflections which mark ordinary speech, and attempted to reproduce his discoveries as faithfully as possible in the musical investiture which he gave to the poet's lines. "Soft and gentle speech he interpreted by half-spoken, half-sung tones, on a sustained instrumental bass; feelings of a deeper, emotional kind by a melody with greater intervals and a lively tempo, the accompanying instrumental harmonies changing more frequently."[B] He bestowed the greatest care on the rhythm of the music, making it flow along with the rhythm of the words.

These men were as revolutionary in their day as Wagner in ours, many times as intolerant, and, some will say, perhaps equally visionary. They revamped the Hellenic myths concerning the power of music, not as containing a germ of verity wrapped in an ample cloak of poetical symbolism, but as very truth. What the ancient art had been they did not know, but they did not hesitate to say that compared with it the music of their own time (the time of Palestrina and the Netherland School) was a barbarism, the creation of a people whose natural rudeness was evidenced even in their uncouth names—Okeghem, Hobrecht, etc. They could not reconcile counterpoint with the theories touching the province of music laid down by Plato; and that fact sufficed to condemn it. Count Vernio himself published a tract stating the purposes of the reformers. The first step in the process of curing the evil which had come over music, he said, should be to protect the poetical text from the musicians who, to exploit their inventions, tore the poetry to tatters, giving different voices different words to sing simultaneously. The philosophers of old—Plato in particular—had said that the melody should follow the verses of the poet and sweeten them. "When you compose, therefore," said the noble amateur, "have a care that the text remain uninjured, the words be kept intelligible, and do not permit yourselves to be carried off your feet by counterpoint, that wicked swimmer, who is swept along unresistingly by the stream, and arrives at an entirely different landing-place than he intended to make. For, as much as the soul is nobler than the body, so much nobler are words than counterpoint; and as the soul must govern the body, so counterpoint must take its laws from poetry." Caccini, who was a famous singing-master, and the first professional musician to join the Florentine coterie, made many statements in the preface to his Nuove Musiche which Gluck and Wagner only echoed when they came to urge their reforms. Thus he recommends the choice of a pitch which will enable the singer always to use his natural voice, so that expression may be unconstrained. He advises that the singer emancipate himself from a too strict adherence to measure, fixing, instead, the relative value of notes by consideration for the words to which they are set. More striking than either of these utterances, however, is his condemnation of the roulades which had come into use even before the solo style had been invented. He calls these roulades "Long flights" (flourishes or whirlings) of the voice (lunghi giri di voce); and says of them, literally: "They were not invented as being necessary to good singing, but, as I believe, to provide a certain titillation of the ears for the benefit of such as have little knowledge of what expressive singing means; for if they understood this, they would unquestionably detest these passages, since nothing is so offensive as they to expressive singing. And it is for this reason that I have said the lunghi giri di voce are so ill applied. I introduce them in songs which are less passionate, and, indeed, on long, not on short syllables, and in closing cadences." Caccini further advises the avoidance of artificial tones, and the use of the natural voice in order that the feelings may have expression. Wagner urges his singers to leave off the affected pathos which they are so prone to assume with the song-voice, and to enunciate, breathe, and phrase as naturally and unconstrainedly as they would if they were speaking the dialogue instead of singing it. Caccini wished the singer to emancipate himself from the fetters of musical metre, and to consult the rhythm of the words. In Wagner's vocal parts the aim is to achieve through music an increased expressiveness for the poetry, and to this end he raises it to a kind of intensified speech, which retains as much as possible of the distinctness of ordinary dialogue with its emotional capacity raised to a higher power. He desires that the melody shall spring naturally from the poetry, but also that the poetry shall "yearn" for musical expression. Caccini recognized the beauty of embellished song, but restricted the introduction of vocal flourishes to songs which were wanting in expressiveness—in other words, to songs intended merely to charm the ear. Wagner (and here I should like to correct an almost universal misconception)—Wagner never condemned beautiful singing, even in the Italian sense, except where it stands in the way of truthful, dramatic utterance. But he raises the question of nationality and tongue as one which must first of all be considered in determining how poetry is to be set to music. Deference must be paid to the genius of the language employed, and also to the vocal peculiarities of the people who are to perform and enjoy the drama. This is really Wagner's starting-point. He aims to be a national dramatist. In the Italian opera the vocal adornments, favored by the inherent softness and beauty of the Italian language, gradually usurped the first place, while dramatic motive, which had inspired the invention of the opera, dropped out of sight. For such an art there is little natural aptitude in the German, and consequently only a modicum of sympathy. Sung to florid tunes, German words become worse than unintelligible; the poetry loses its merit as speech, and the music is robbed of all its purpose and most of its charm. Believing this, and having already striven to restore naturalness of expression in the spoken drama, Wagner wrote the vocal parts of his lyric dramas so as to bring out first the force of the poetry as such.

There is one more point of resemblance between Wagner and the creators of the Italian lyric drama which I must refer to briefly. It may help us out from the sway of that prejudice which we are so prone to feel towards an innovator, to learn that in so many essentials Wagner has simply given new expression to old ideas. Already, in his "Euridice," Peri concealed his orchestra behind the scenes; but as this device was borrowed from the old Roman pantomimes, and was a general custom, I lay no stress upon it. Monteverde, who did not belong to the band of Florentine reformers, but adopted their theories and put them into practice with far greater skill than any of the originators of the new style, added to the instrumental apparatus until he had a reputation for noise with which that of Wagner, in this respect, is no circumstance. In his "Orfeo" he employed thirty-six different instruments, and it has even been suspected that he was the precursor of Wagner in the device of characterizing his personages by relegating to each a certain instrument or set of instruments. But this, I am convinced, is based on a misunderstanding. It is certain, however, that he used his instruments in such a way as to emphasize climaxes, holding some of them back until the arrival of moments in the action when their sudden entrance would have a particularly telling effect.