Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 4.djvu/373

WAGNER. incorporated with many additions and emendations in 'Götterdämmerung.' Sundry germs of the music, too, were conceived at this early period.

Wagner entertained hopes that the general desire for political reform might lead to a better state of things in musical and theatrical matters. Accordingly he wrote out an elaborate plan for the organisation of a 'national theatre.' His objects were:—thorough reform of the theatre at Dresden; amalgamation of the existing art institutions of Saxony, with head-quarters at Dresden; increase of efficiency and reduction of expenditure. Supported throughout by detailed statements of facts and figures, his proposals appear eminently practical, and might have been carried out entire or in part with obvious advantage. The new liberal Minister of the Interior, Herr Oberländer, sympathised with Wagner, but had little hope of surmounting the initiatory difficulty, viz. to detach the finances of the theatre from those of the court, and get an annual grant of public money in place of the subsidies from the king's privy purse. Derisory pencil notes on the margin of the manuscript showed that it had been read by certain people at court, but no action was taken by the Ministry; and the political catastrophe of May 1849 ere long put an end to all projects of reform, social or artistic.

Wagner was less concerned with politics proper than is generally supposed. The speech—one of two—which he delivered in the 'Vaterlandsverein,' a political club, June 14, 1848, and which was then reported in full in the 'Dresden Anzeiger,' has been unearthed and reprinted by Herr Tappert (R. W. p. 33–42). Its tone is moderate enough; and it had no further consequences than a reprimand from the police authorities, who thought it undesirable that a 'königlicher Kapellmeister' should speak in such a place. In May 1849, when the court of Saxony fled, and Prussian troops were despatched to coerce the rioters at Dresden, Wagner was much excited; but the tale of his having carried a red flag, and fought on the barricades, is not corroborated by the 'acts of accusation' preserved in the Saxon police records. Alarming rumours, however, reached him that a warrant for his arrest was being prepared, and he thought it prudent to get out of the way and await the turn of events. He went quietly to Weimar, where Liszt was busy with Tannhäuser. On the 19th May, in course of a rehearsal, news came from Dresden that orders for Wagner's arrest as a 'politically dangerous individual' had been issued. There was no time to lose; Liszt procured a passport, and escorted Wagner as far as Eisenach on the way to Paris.

(1849–61, æt. 36–48). 'It is impossible to describe my delight, after I had got over the immediate painful impressions, when I felt free at last—free from the world of torturing and ever-unsatisfied wishes, free from the annoying surroundings that had called forth such wishes.'

The hopes which Liszt indulged, that Wagner might now be able to gain a footing in Paris, proved futile. Wagner's desire to publish a series of articles in a French periodical 'on the prospects of art under the revolution' met with no response. Paris, said the editor of the Journal des Débats, would laugh at any attempt to discuss the notions of a German musician about the relation of art to politics.—Music altogether was at a low ebb in France, and no one cared to risk the production of a tragic opera.

In June, 1849, Wagner went to Zurich, where several of his Dresden friends had found refuge, and where his wife joined him. In Oct. 1849, he became a citizen of Zurich. The first years of his residence there are marked by a long spell of literary work: 'Die Kunst und die Revolution,' 1849; 'Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft,' 'Kunst und Klima,' 'Das Judenthum in der Musik,' 1850; 'Ueber die Goethe Stiftung,' 'Ein Theater in Zurich,' 'Erinnerungen an Spontini,' 1851; 'Ueber die Aufführung des Tannhäuser,' 'Bemerkungen zur Aufführung der Oper Der fliegende Holländer,' 'Oper und Drama,' 1852. 'My mental state,' writes Wagner, looking back upon these books and essays, 'resembled a struggle. I tried to express, theoretically, that which under the incongruity of my artistic aims as contrasted with the tendencies of public art, especially of the opera, I could not properly put forward by means of direct artistic production.'—An account of the main contents of these writings belongs to Part II of this article, and it will suffice here to touch upon a few minor points which are of biographical interest.

Too many side issues have been raised with regard to 'Das Judenthum in der Musik,' an article which first appeared in the Neue Zeitschrift under the pseudonym K. Freigedank. It is a far less intemperate and injudicious production than might be supposed from the succès de scandale it met with when Wagner signed and republished it with additions nineteen years later. In spite of his belief to the contrary, it did not at first attract much attention; the Zeitschrift, then edited by Franz Brendel, had only a few hundred subscribers, and no other German journal, as far as the writer is aware, reproduced it. The only immediate effect was a vindictive feeling in musical circles against Brendel. Eleven masters at the Leipzig Conservatorium, where Brendel was engaged as lecturer on the History of Music, signed a letter requesting him either to give up his post or to divulge the name of the writer. Brendel refused to accept either alternative. Wagner's authorship, however, was suspected, and the attitude of many professional journalists towards him grew bitterly hostile. When he issued the augmented edition in 1869 dozens of articles and pamphlets appeared in reply; yet none of these attempted to deal with the artistic questions