Читать книгу Richard Wagner, Composer of Operas - John F. Runciman - Страница 19

His apprenticeship was by no means run out in 1832. He had written and heard performed some overtures, and he set to work and completed the big Symphony in C major, "in the style of Beethoven"; and this done he went for a holiday and to gain some little experience in Vienna. That he could afford such a trip, when at the age of nineteen he could not contribute a penny to the household expenses, bears out what I have said about the assistance he received from his family. He contributed nothing, and, considering his headstrong temper, only a courageous or reckless man would have prophesied that he would ever be able to contribute anything. However, to Vienna he went, and heard Zampa—many more times than he wished. He heard Strauss' waltzes and liked them; he saw Raymund's forgotten achievements and waxed eloquent about them too. He seems to have learnt nothing but a lively contempt for a frivolous people who had forgotten how lately Beethoven had died amongst them—only five years before; a people who danced and made merry and went philandering while every hour cholera was carrying off its tens and sometimes hundreds of victims. He himself was light-hearted and gay then; and having seen what there was to be seen he went back to Leipzig via Prague. Here he sketched Die Hochzeit; met Dionys Weber, who had known Mozart, and Tomaschek, who had at all events seen Beethoven; and made the acquaintance of Friedrich Kittl, a fat, double-chinned amateur, just blossoming into a full-blown professional musician, who ten years later succeeded Dionys Weber as principal of the Prague conservatoire.

He still had very much to learn. But an Overture in D minor was performed at the Gewandhaus concerts on February 23, 1832; a Scena and Aria were sung by one Henriette Wüst at a "declamatorium" in the Hoftheater on April 22 of the same year; a C major Overture was given at the Gewandhaus eight days later; on January 10 of the following year the C Symphony was played at the Gewandhaus after being tried by a smaller orchestral society; an Overture to a preposterous play, King Enzio, in which Rosalie took a part, had been played nightly while the piece ran. I don't know what the "Scena with Aria" may be; a "declamatorium" seems to be a fine term for a recitation or evening of spouting; the C major Symphony was the last work of Wagner's to appear on a Gewandhaus programme. At the same concert Clara Wieck—afterwards Schumann—played a piano-concerto by Piscio. Reinecke's malicious idiocy need rouse no bitterness now; but I may repeat that under his directorship these concerts earned the contempt of musical Europe as thoroughly as did our own Philharmonic Society. Until lately, when one mentioned either, every musician laughed: now both are trying to rehabilitate themselves, without much success. Both the Philharmonic and the Gewandhaus represented musical vested interests; musicians like Reinecke in Leipzig, and non-musicians like Cusins in London, owed their handsome incomes to the positions into which good-luck had thrust them; and we could hardly expect them to show their publics what much abler men were about. It was because Reinecke and Cusins (and with him J.W. Davison of the Times) knew Wagner to be a great musician that they "kept him out" by the simple plan of saying he was not a musician. It was not the truth, of course, and they knew it was not the truth; but it is too much to expect truth to be considered when solid incomes are at stake.

At the Gewandhaus—and also at Prague, where Dionys Weber ran through a Beethoven symphony as if it was a Haydn allegro—Richard got his first lessons in the art of conducting, by a method for which much may be said, that is, he first learnt here how the thing should not be done. He knew the ninth symphony by heart, and was also entranced by the blended loveliness and strength of Mozart's symphonies: played here, all the effects and points he could plainly see in the score disappeared. He knew better, even thus early, than to think the two great composers capable of writing the kind of academic stuff which looks like music on paper and when played sounds like anything you like excepting music. He saw that when an orchestra carelessly romped through a movement, paying no heed to expression, to nuances of colour, to tempi, it did not really play, interpret, the music; and soon his convictions bore very remarkable fruit.

At the theatre he learnt the final lesson needed to prepare him for writing operas of his own. Masaniello in its way opened his eyes as much as Beethoven's symphonies had done. Not only the bustle, but the clean sweep of the thing from beginning to finish of each act, with brilliant climaxes in the finales, made him stare and gasp in amazement. Weber he admired; but Weber's power lay in the beauty and picturesqueness of his music: in Masaniello the music made its effect because of the theatrical skill with which it was used. The same thing he felt in William Tell. These two men, Auber and Rossini, were masters of the art of writing effectively for the theatre. The drama of their operas was not particularly striking nor lofty, the music did not come near Beethoven's, Mozart's, nor even Weber's in beauty, but their mastery in writing theatre-music carried them through triumphantly. The problem was, then, to acquire their skill and use it for a high and noble purpose; and this Richard at once attempted to do. He planned and wrote the words of Die Hochzeit. He laid it aside because Rosalie disliked the plot; but immediately he proceeded to another opera, Die Feen, which he completed at Würzburg. The book of Die Hochzeit is dated December 5, 1832, Leipzig. On January 10 of the following year his symphony was given; on the 12th he replied to his brother Albert—now singer, actor and stage-manager at the Würzburg theatre—accepting an invitation to stay with him; a few days later he set out, reaching his destination towards the end of the month.