Wagner, Schumann, and the Lessons of Beethoven's Ninth
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Wagner, Schumann, and the Lessons of Beethoven's Ninth
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| ISBN-13: | 9780520960978 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of California Press |
| Publication date: | 04/24/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 232 |
| File size: | 14 MB |
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Wagner, Schumann, and the Lessons of Beethoven's Ninth
By Christopher Alan Reynolds
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Copyright © 2015 The Regents of the University of CaliforniaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-520-96097-8
CHAPTER 1
Wagner's Faustian Understanding of Beethoven's Ninth
With The Flying Dutchman Wagner came of age as a composer of German opera. The first to make this assertion was Wagner himself, but it is also a viewpoint accepted by generations of scholars and critics since. Several years and a few operas after The Flying Dutchman, Wagner described this juncture of his career as "a crucial turning point of my artistic evolution," and, echoing the language that Beethoven had used at the onset of his middle period, as a "new path" (eine neue Bahn). In his essay A Communication to My Friends (1851), Wagner revealed that the story of the flying Dutchman
was the first popular myth [Volksgedicht] to penetrate my heart and compel me, as the creative artist, to reshape it and interpret it in artistic form. From this point my career as a poet begins, while that as a mere maker of opera libretti ceases.... The phenomena that might have served as examples for my new path were nowhere to be found. My procedure was new; it was indicated to me by my own inner state of mind, impressed upon me by the need to communicate this state of mind. In order to liberate myself from within (that is, to communicate with like-minded people out of a need for understanding) I had to set out in a new direction as an artist, one not suggested by my prior experience.... The form of the "Flying Dutchman" poem was, like that of all my subsequent works, conditioned in every particular, down to the last detail of its musical execution, by the material itself, as this had become part of a distinctive personal frame of mind [Lebensstimmung], and as I continued to acquire a capacity for artistic formation along the lines of my newly chosen path, through practice and experience.
The French-influenced operas of the 1830s, constructed conventionally as number operas with stand-alone arias and choruses, yielded to operas in which the music flowed more continuously, with motives that carried symbolic significance. Rienzi in the late 1830s was followed quickly by The Flying Dutchman and Tannhäuser in the early 1840s. One aspect of the compositional change that has been discussed repeatedly is national, or, nationalistic; namely, that Wagner returned musically to his cultural roots, to German musical models rather than French or Italian. As Thomas Grey described the change, "it is fair to regard Der fliegende Holländer as a new beginning for Wagner, drawing on a newly rediscovered enthusiasm for his German Romantic roots." The importance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which Wagner repeatedly said he heard in Paris in 1839, has also been recognized. Wagner credited the chance to attend F.-A. Habeneck's rehearsal of the first three movements of the work with inspiring him to write a symphony of his own, a symphony which was to have taken the story of Goethe's Faust as its subject matter. This project floundered after Wagner completed the first movement, a movement he eventually published by itself as his Faust Overture. The pivotal importance of Beethoven's Ninth is evident in a chronology of his compositions and musical projects during these years (table 1.1).
Although some of the change in his style certainly resulted from Wagner's turning away from French and Italian influences, the influence of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was particularly significant. An important and underutilized record of Wagner's musical understanding of the Ninth Symphony is his 1846 program for that work, based on quotations from Goethe's Faust for each movement that he surrounded with his own narrative. Even though he published it five or six years after composing The Flying Dutchman, there are reasons to believe that Wagner had already chosen the quotations from Goethe's Faust. His program provides a key to recognizing not only Wagner's understanding of musical processes in his last symphony, but also the pervasive debt of The Flying Dutchman to the Ninth.
Wagner described the musical genesis of The Flying Dutchman in A Communication to My Friends:
I recall how, even before I set about writing the Flying Dutchman as a whole, I sketched Senta's Ballad in the second act, working out both the verses and music for it. In this piece I unconsciously set down the thematic seeds of the whole opera: it contained the condensed image of the entire drama, as this existed in my mind. And when it was time to give a title to the completed work I had a mind to designate it a "dramatic ballad." When I eventually came to compose the rest of the opera, the thematic image [contained in the Ballad] spread itself quite naturally across the entire drama like a complete net [vollständiges Gewebe]; all that remained to do, with no further conscious effort, was to develop further and more completely the various thematic seeds contained in the Ballad according to their own tendencies.
Here again Wagner's account has been disputed by some of the leading Wagner specialists of the past generation. Carl Dahlhaus was the first to criticize this claim for trying to impose Wagner's later ideas about musical coherence on what was still a work written in an earlier style. As John Deathridge later put it: "no impartial listener could describe [Senta's Ballad] as the musical plasma from which the rest of the opera grew." Yet Grey has defended Wagner, pointing out that Senta's Ballad is indeed of central importance and that various motivic ideas do in fact crop up elsewhere in the opera. I will offer my own support of Wagner's claim that Senta's Ballad was a "condensed image of the entire opera" that "spread itself quite naturally across the entire drama like a complete net."
As a point of departure, I have assembled in appendix 1 references from Wagner criticism to moments in The Flying Dutchman that appear indebted to other works. The appendix identifies nineteen potential allusions or models treated in numerous books and articles. Most of the studies fall in the decades between 1960 and 2000, but several of them are part of a continuous tradition of such citations that extends back to critics and partisans who wrote while Wagner still held court at Bayreuth. This is not to be taken as a comprehensive list and especially not for late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century accounts. In compiling it I have not included every claim, only those that seem to have credibility, either because a comparison has been made by a reputable author, or because a claim in my admittedly subjective estimation has merit.
To begin with, only six composers have been mentioned, and they are indeed primarily German: Beethoven, Boieldieu, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Marschner, Meyerbeer, and Weber, plus one folk song. Moreover, most of these have plots that deal with the supernatural, notably excepting Beethoven. Ten studies mention Marschner's Der Vampyr and eight Meyerbeer's Robert le diable, and in most cases the writers note not just musical similarities but also dramatic. Two of these are shown in examples 1.1 and 1.2. The first compares a Schwabian folk song to the nearly identical tune Wagner wrote for the chorus of the Norwegian sailors. In this chorus the young women of the town sing triadic entreaties to the silent sailors on the Dutchman's ship: "Hey sailors! Wouldn't you like some cool wine? You must really be thirsty!" to which the Norwegian sailors reply, "They don't drink." The Schwabian folk song expresses this exactly, as three women's voices sing, "Now I'm going to the Brünnele [a public fountain], but I won't drink." In example 1.2 the comparison is between an aria for Max in Der Freischütz and Erik's cavatina in The Flying Dutchman. Max and Erik are both hunters, an identity that, as Arthur Groos proposed, Wagner highlighted by beginning Erik's aria with the identical intervals for the first five notes. Alexander Rehding concurs and identifies additional parallels of instrumentation, form, and harmony.
Senta's Ballad has several distinguished forerunners. The operas of Boieldieu, Marschner, and Meyerbeer that are understood to have influenced this strophic song were each in their ways successful, indeed, wildly successful. Supernatural characters inhabit them all, and the central tragic tale of each opera is presented in a narrative song, performed by a character who does not then realize that he or she will soon be swept up fatally in the very story that unfolds in the song. Wagner unquestionably knew of these precedents. He had conducted Der Vampyr in Würzburg in 1833 and had even revised one aria for the occasion. Thus when he arranged for the Dutchman to enter shortly after the conclusion of Senta's Ballad, he was likely emulating the entrance of the vampire shortly after Emmy's song. Moreover all of Senta's references to the "pale man" and the "sad look" (the "bleicher Mann" and the "trauriger Blick") recall the same phrases sung repeatedly by Emmy. The musical and textual debts of Senta's Ballad to Marschner and Meyerbeer gain more importance because of Wagner's own account of how he composed The Flying Dutchman. However influenced he may have been by his own sea journey, when it came time to put notes on paper, he turned, as any ambitious young opera composer would, to successful models.
Yet as Wagner began composing The Flying Dutchman, two of his potential sources were not operatic, but symphonic and literary. In early 1840 Wagner was steeped in both Beethoven's Ninth (which he had just heard in rehearsal in Paris) andFaust (he was composing a Faust symphony). Aspects of both the Ninth and Faust have been detected in Dutchman. Klaus Kropfinger and John Deathridge have heard echoes of Beethoven's Ninth in the overture's open-fifth beginning and the Dutchman's theme that uses only two notes a fourth and fifth apart (example 1.3). Others have commented on Faustian aspects of The Flying Dutchman. Dietrich Borchmeyer termed the story "the maritime equivalent of Faust," because of its subject matter: a sea captain falls prey to the devil because of his short-sighted, strong-willed ambition. In deciding to base his program note on the meaning of the Ninth on Goethe, Wagner may have known that one of Habeneck's musicians, the violinist and violist Chrétien Urhan, had published a guide to the Ninth in 1838 based on quotations from Dante's Divine Comedy.
Wagner's debt to both the Ninth and to Faust is far more substantial than previously realized. His program for the Ninth Symphony functions remarkably well as a description of the basic themes in The Flying Dutchman. The published version of his program notes for Beethoven's Ninth did not serve directly as a blueprint for his opera; the opera was after all written some five years before the program. But as I argue in the analysis which follows, it is highly likely that, having written The Flying Dutchman soon after hearing the Ninth in Paris and after he had begun composing a Faust symphony, Wagner already associated Faust and the Ninth Symphony, and that these both influenced his opera. A Faustian interpretation of the Ninth provided Wagner with a metaphor that he could then elaborate in his opera. When he later had occasion to write program notes explicating Beethoven's Ninth, he did so in a way that actually expressed how similar were the underlying premises of the two works.
The possibility of a connection between Goethe's Faust, the Ninth Symphony, and The Flying Dutchman is best demonstrated by quoting extended segments of Wagner's program notes for the Ninth, contributing my own gloss along the way to point out elements shared by The Flying Dutchman. Because Wagner quotes Goethe at length, there are three voices in the pages that follow: my own, Wagner's (indented), and Goethe's as quoted by Wagner (indented twice). My analysis begins with a comparison of texts; a discussion of musical events that support the textual parallels follows in chapter 2.
WAGNER'S PROGRAM FOR THE NINTH
In his programmatic account of the first movement, Wagner constructs a drama that depicts a soul's struggle against an oppressive, malevolent force and a longing that is eternally doomed to failure and despair. Movement by movement, his description works as well for the Dutchman and his endless wanderings as it does for Faust.
First Movement
At the basis of the first movement there seems to be a struggle, conceived in the grandest sense, between the soul striving for joy [Freude] and the oppression of some inimical power interposing itself between us and earthly happiness. The great principal theme heard at the outset, naked and powerful as if emerging from behind some uncanny concealing veil, could perhaps be translated (in a sense apt also for the entire musical poem [Tondichtung]), through Goethe's line:
Renounce you must, you must renounce! [Entbehren sollst du / Sollst entbehren!]
Opposing this mighty force we discover a noble defiance, a virile energy of resistance that increases, in the center of the movement, to a state of open battle against its opponent: two powerful combatants who prove equally invincible, so that each finally desists from the struggle.
Now Wagner, first in his own words, then in Goethe's, describes a cyclical pattern of yearning, hope, and loss that easily applies to the Dutchman's seven-year cycle of searching, hoping, and failing:
During a few fleeting moments of light we can perceive a bittersweet smile of happiness, seeking us out (as it seems)—that very happiness toward which we have been struggling, but which our crafty, powerful antagonist has prevented us from finding; now his darksome wings eclipse the desired goal such that we sink back in brooding until roused again to defiance, to renewedstruggle against that demon bent upon robbing us of all our joy. Thus the never- ending motion of this astounding musical work is composed of elements of force, resistance, surging combat, yearning, hope, near achievement, renewed loss, renewed searching, and renewed struggle. Throughout, the struggle is reduced now and again to a more sustained state of despondency such as Goethe evokes in these lines:
In very terror I at morn awake,
Upon the verge of bitter weeping,
To see the day of disappointment break,
To no one hope of mine—not one—its promise keeping
That even each joy's presentiment
With willful cavil would diminish,
With grinning masks of life prevent
My mind its fairest work to finish!
Then, too, when night descends how anxiously
Upon my couch of sleep I lay me:
There, also, comes no rest to me,
But some wild dream is sent to fray me.
At the end of the movement this somber, joyless mood swells to huge proportions, as if encompassing the whole world in its terrifying, sublime majesty: this world that God had created—for joy.
Goethe's verses about the futility of sleep, the lack of rest, and days without hope are answered in Senta's Ballad with references to the man who keeps watch through the night ("wacht ohne Rast") and the only unchanging words of the refrain: "without rest, without peace."
Second Movement
Act III of The Flying Dutchman begins with the Chorus of Norwegian sailors who are celebrating loudly with local women while the Dutchman's ship remains dark and quiet. Wagner's notes for Beethoven's scherzo serve these festivities as well:
Upon hearing the first rhythms of this second movement we are instantly seized with wild abandon: we enter a new world, or rather, we are swept up in a delirium, a frenzy. As if driven by despair, fleeing from it, we seem to be constantly, unceasingly chasing after some new, unknown happiness—since the old one that had earlier radiated its distant smile is now quite thoroughly lost to us. Goethe expresses something like this impulse in these lines:
But thou hast heard, it is not of joy we are talking.
I take the wildering whirl, enjoyment's keenest pain [dem schmerzlichsten Genuss]!
Let us the sensual deeps explore,
To quench the fervors of glowing passion
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Wagner, Schumann, and the Lessons of Beethoven's Ninth by Christopher Alan Reynolds. Copyright © 2015 The Regents of the University of California. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS.
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Table of Contents
PrefaceAcknowledgments
Introduction
1. Wagner’s Faustian Understanding of Beethoven’s Ninth
2. The Impact of the Ninth on The Flying Dutchman
3. Wagner, Thematic Dispersion, and Contrary Motion
4. Schumann, Thematic Dispersion, and Contrary Motion
5. Late Schumann, Wagner, and Bach
6. Brahms’s Triple Response to the Ninth
7. Wagner and Schumann
Appendix 1: Citations of Wagner’s Possible Allusions and Influences in The Flying Dutchman
Appendix 2: Contrary Motion Counterpoint in the First Movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony
Appendix 3: Contrary Motion Counterpoint in The Flying Dutchman
Appendix 4: Contrary Motion Counterpoint in the Fourth Movement of Schumann’s Second Symphony
Appendix 5: Contrary Motion Counterpoint in the First Movement of Brahms’s First Symphony
Abbreviations
Notes
Works Cited
Index