Dear Hans,
Today I want to send you my account of the Coriolanus Overture and to accompany it with a few lines: I do not suppose it will be much, since my nerves are giving me a devil of a time; I keep having to flatter and cajole them to stop them from growing rebellious.
I have recently written to Uhlig concerning a practice I have adopted in performing Beethoven’s instrumental works and which I consider uniquely suited to the spread of understanding; I hope my letter will induce him to write an article on this extremely important subject. - If you undertake a detailed comparison, feature by feature, of my own account of the graphic and poetic content of the Coriolanus Overture with the composition itself, you will, I am sure, admit the justice of my view, and at the same time be bound to concede that all attempts to convey an understanding of such works, although hitherto regarded as the absolute preserve of the absolute musician, have so far met with total failure on the latter’s part. Only now have I been able to perform this work in such a way that what the poetic composer intended is conveyed clearly and intelligibly at all times: the effect that this has had on the purely musical execution of the work is unbelievable. By the way! - the figure in the middle section must always be executed as follows: [music example] - without this accent, the whole phrase remains expressionless. -
The scene you are looking for in Romeo & Juliet you will not, I think, find anywhere in Shakespeare’s play: Shakespeare is an out and out historian, who constructs his plays entirely out of historical detail. You will best find it - for all its superficiality - in the Italian libretto, for necessity has here forced the librettist to concentrate his material against his will. I am thinking of the “famous” finale (E flat major). Here you have the whole graphic subject-matter of the poem encapsulated in a single moment: treat the theme nobly where in Bellini it was trivial. Hatred as an all-pervasive element: enthusiastic love springing up as a surprising offshoot of this element. But no “fatal/political” motif - instead, hatred as pure passion: love, tender in its beginnings, growing ardent, reaching its jubilant climax, - finally consumed by the element of hatred which, inwardly consumed, fades into a lament. Thus: the triumphs of love! -
But this is your own affair, and I do you a great injustice by speaking out so passionately against you; once before I did the same thing - with your suggestion for an Oresteia Symphony: and who did not even reply to me on this point? - my good friend Hans! -
Why provoke me with your architect? - Do you not see that all our plastic arts derive from architecture and that they are all parts of it? - In the architect, purely human needs (initially: somewhere to live) generate an artistic intent, just as, in the case of the poet, the artistic intent grows out of the need of life itself; in order to realize this intent, what the architect needs is first a sculptor and finally a painter in order, as far as possible, to give his mathematical straight lines, angles and corners the instinctive shapes of amorphous nature. However - this is not something I can express here quite so succinctly. Only this much: the architect comes into the most direct contact with life’s innermost necessity: not only in building a house, but in designing every bench, table and crate, it is the architect (the constructor of naked form) who acts first: he is inspired to create his greatest work of art by the greatest of human needs, and that is the poetic need; and here he comes into direct contact with the poet; prior to that contact, he grows independently out of life. Certainly, a completely independent work of architectural art, unconditioned either by the needs of everyday life or, ultimately, by any poetic need, is unknown to me, though not to King Ludwig of Bavaria etc. This work of art can rest only upon imitation, in other words - an imitation of architectonic works of art which, at another time and in different circumstances, met some real, if intrinsically exaggerated and luxurious, need. In its time, however, the Greek temple was a real, religious necessity to the Hellene; no less, in their way, were the churches of the Middle Ages etc. These sprang from an almost artistic need. We ourselves shall have only our theatres to meet this need in the future, since our greatest artistic need can no longer be of an ecclesiastically religious nor of a princely luxurious nature. I know not a single work of absolute art, and therefore no absolute work of architectural art. -
[...]
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 139