My dear friend,
I am enclosing my account of the Coriolanus Overture. I have decided against writing a report on the performance for the Zeitung f. Musik: it is better if I keep my mouth shut for a while there. But what I would have chosen to say on that occasion, I shall now communicate to you with the utmost brevity, in the hope of persuading you to devote a proper article to the subject in question.
The conductor of works such as those of Beethoven has until now rarely understood his true task. Clearly what he must do is transmit to the layman an understanding of these same works: since ultimately this is the outcome of a performance which is in perfect accord with the work, the first question to be asked is how such a performance may be achieved? - What is characteristic about Beethoven’s great orchestral works is that they are real poems in which an attempt is made to represent a real object. The difficulty as far as our understanding is concerned lies in accurately identifying the object thus represented. Beethoven was completely imbued with each particular object, his most important tonal creations owe their existence almost exclusively to the individuality of the object which thus imbued him: given this awareness, it seemed to him wholly superfluous to describe this object in further detail, except in his tonal creations themselves. Just as our poets of literature really only communicate themselves to another poet of literature, so Beethoven, involuntarily but in like manner, communicated himself only to the tone-poet. Indeed, the truly absolute musician, i.e. the variationalist of absolute music, could not understand Beethoven any longer, since he was concerned only with the “How?” and not with the “What?”: the layman, however, could not help but be totally confused by these tonal creations, or at best he was misled into enjoying what served the tone-poet merely as his expressive material. - Until now the layman has heard Beethoven’s tone-poems performed only by absolute musicians: and it goes without saying that this could result only in his failing to understand what he was listening to. For the absolute musician it seemed necessary only to identify the “How?”: but it was impossible for him to identify even this correctly, chiefly because he did not understand the “What” that ought to be expressed by this “How”. As a result, all contact between conductor and orchestra foundered on a complete lack of understanding between them: the conductor strove solely to articulate musical phrases which he himself did not understand and which he had made his own rather as one learns melodious verses by heart according to their sound alone when the verses in question are written in a foreign language unknown to the person reciting the poem. In the process, of course, only the most superficial aspects of the work can be taken into account: the speaker can never articulate and emphasize the words according to his own conviction, but must stick strictly and slavishly to the most random superficiality of sound as represented by the phrase he has learned by heart. Judge then what our understanding of a poet would turn out to be if only the sound of the language were to be reproduced and perceived by reciter and listener, as must inevitably be the case if the poem is delivered in a language which neither the reciter (who has learned it by heart on the basis of its sound) nor the listener can understand. This comparison with the character of traditional performances of Beethoven’s works will be regarded as an exaggeration only if the language of music - being general - is granted a greater and more immediate intelligibility than a rational language of words. But it is precisely on this point that we delude ourselves as regards what is considered to be “understanding”: as long as no actual poetic object is expressed by the language of music, that language may of course be regarded as readily intelligible, since there can be no question here of any real understanding; but if what is expressed by the language of music is determined by a poetic object, this language especially will be utterly unintelligible as long as the poetic object itself is not at the same time precisely described by other means of expression than those of absolute music. - Now, in a piece of music by Beethoven, the poetic object can only be conjectured by the tone-poet himself because - as I remarked previously - Beethoven communicated himself, involuntarily, only to the tone-poet who feels exactly as he does, who shares the same training, and who has almost the same creative powers; this man alone is capable of giving the layman an understanding of these works, and the principal way he can do so is by offering a clear indication of the object of the tone-poem to both the performers and the audience, thus making good an unintentional defect in the technique of the tone-poet who had omitted to make this indication clear. Any other performance of the true Beethoven tone-poems, however technically perfect it may be, must remain correspondingly unintelligible as long as the conductor’s understanding of it is not communicated in the way described. The most striking proof of this fact readily emerges from a closer examination of the attitude of our modern concert-going public towards Beethoven’s tone-poems. If these works were really understood by the audience, i.e. in accordance with the poetic object, how is it possible for this same audience to accept a modern concert programme? How is it possible, at one and the same concert, to offer the audience of a Beethoven symphony other musical compositions of the most unmitigated vacuousness? But the fact that present-day conductors and composers, for the very reason given (namely their inability to recognize the poetic object of these tonal creations), have remained lacking in any real understanding of the same is proved, is it not, by the works which they nowadays compose, and their manner of composition, in spite of Beethoven’s admonitory precedent? Would the vague and disjointed note-spinning of modern instrumental music be possible if composers had understood the true essence of Beethoven’s tone-poems? And what this essence entails is that Beethoven’s longer compositions are only secondarily music, but that first and foremost they contain a poetic object. Or might it be argued that this object was perhaps taken simply from the music? Would that not be the same as if the poet were to take his theme from language, the painter his from colour? - But the conductor who perceives only music in a piece by Beethoven is just like the reciter who sticks only to the language of a poem, or like a person interpreting a painting who sticks only to the colours on the canvas. In the case of present-day conductors (many of whom do not even understand the music), the situation at best is as follows: - they can identify the key, the theme, the part-writing, the instrumentation etc. and with that they think they have identified everything that is present in the piece of music.
It is the non-musician who has led the way to a true understanding of Beethoven’s works: quite involuntarily he desired to know what the composer had actually had in mind when writing the music. This led to the first difficulty. Imagination, in its search for understanding, fell back upon all manner of arbitrary inventions of bizarre features and romantic images. The grotesque and generally trivial nature of the ideas imputed in this way to Beethoven’s compositions was soon sensed by those whose feelings in the matter were more refined, and thus such ideas came to be rejected. Since these images were inappropriate, it was thought better to reject all such ideas entirely. And yet a perfectly legitimate feeling lay behind this urge to create such images: but the only person capable of identifying the desired object (an object which the tone-poet himself had had in mind - without necessarily knowing it) was the one man who, in turn, was entirely familiar with the characteristic essence of the work in question. Certainly, the great difficulty in making such an identification once again lay in the character of the object itself, which the tone-poet presented to us in the tone-painting alone: only those who fully recognized this difficulty, too, might successfully hazard an attempt to foster in others a true and necessary understanding. Here you can tell the story of the Ninth Symphony in Dresden - and what really matters - the striking success I had in placing this work in the correct light, in spite of its reputation for being so extremely difficult. - You can also mention here that I never again agreed to performing Beethoven’s compositions without in some way influencing people’s understanding in the way described, and that what drove me to do so was simply my inescapable awareness of the need for such an understanding. What always struck me above all else was the effect which my approach had on practising musicians themselves. Here in Zurich I have enabled the most hidebound dance musicians to achieve things of which neither their audiences nor they themselves had previously had the least idea. Pretend all this is based upon private conversations - as though K, for ex., had told it to you. - Now you can adduce the “Eroica Symphony”, and report what a great impression was made, especially upon the musicians, as a result of their understanding the work. I must add that my principal remarks were made by word of mouth at the rehearsals - at the relevant points in the score. My most notable success in describing any poetic object was in the case of the “Coriolanus Overture”. I may say that those who have read carefully my interpretation of this work and who have followed the argument through, stage by stage, must admit that, without this interpretation of mine, they would never have understood this uniquely graphic piece of music unless they themselves had already succeeded in isolating this one particular scene on the basis of the general description “Overture to Coriolanus”, as I myself succeeded in doing. Given such an understanding, the enjoyment of such a piece of music then becomes overwhelmingly sublime: almost all our musicians now share it. - etc. - etc. -
The aim of this endeavour?? - Drama!!
It is in this sense, my good friend, and in this sense alone that the Zeitung für Musik must henceforth report matters: you see how much there is to say here. But you must all stick to the maxim which I advanced in my letter to Brendel, “music must be singled out, emphasized and encouraged wherever it develops in the direction of poetry, but where it diverges from that direction, the misguided and erroneous nature of the same must be pointed out and condemned.” Nothing further shall be done for now. -
If nothing happens, I shall not be too concerned - for, in the final analysis, my salvation scarcely depends upon the Zeitung für Musik. - Adieu for today! -
[...]
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 138