Do not be angry with me, my dear friend, for having taken so long to respond to your letter. Shortly after its arrival came Liszt’s visit, and immediately after that I travelled here to the mountains of Graubünden to take the waters. In addition to having little time to spare, I had no great desire to relapse into aesthetic theorizing, which I should have been tempted into doing had I written to you at the time. Now that I have conceived the hope of getting by without doing so, I should like to reply to your letter, even if only briefly, in order to tell you how much pleasure your interest in me has given me and how, in particular, I wish your recent self-sacrificing excursus from Königsberg had met with a better reward than I know was the rather inadequate and uninspired performance of “Tannhäuser” which you attended in Leipzig.
Your book certainly surprised me; much of it so clearly concerns me that it could not remain a secret from me: I had read it even before you sent me a copy.
Your idea of tracing melody through speech is evidence of the great seriousness which you have brought to bear in this matter: you were most fortunate in detecting true melodic and harmonic accents. Basically, I am forced increasingly to realize that what is at issue here is something which each of us does best to come to terms with individually: but since there is such a fearful amount of teaching going on, it is only natural for people to feel a desire to contribute to some more sensible method of teaching. In this respect I have repeatedly drawn Brendel’s attention to the fact that he ought to confine himself much more in his journal to what can actually be learned, in other words technique. The content of a work of art is a matter for the individual, and is not a subject for criticism; it is a question here of feeling a sense of liking or disliking for the work under discussion, and that again is a matter for the individual. Technique, however, is the common property of artists of all ages, each inherits it from the next one, every artist adds to it, and forms it as best he can and must. This is something that can be discussed, although only of course among artists: the layman should never find out what is being said. Now, I genuinely believe that my writings have given cause for a great deal of discussion on the principal questions of technique: but I have so far seen little or no evidence that this particular point has been noticed.
If I have raised any important issue in this respect, it is that of the relationship between poetry and music in general, or between spoken verse and melody in particular. I believe it would be a good idea if a precise and intelligible - and exhaustive - attempt were made to examine the essence of modern spoken verse as evolved by our literary poets as their sole preserve, without the least regard for musical melody, and in that way to prove - by means of numerous examples - that such verse as this cannot be set to music, because our modern melody has developed out of quite different factors which derive from absolute music and which have not the least thing in common with literary verse. On the basis of this one false relationship in artistic technique it ought to be possible to demonstrate convincingly how totally false is the relationship which exists between our literary poetry and our music: but this can be done only by means of a thoroughly detailed exposition of its purely technical aspects. No amount of rhetoric on the problem in all its generality is of the least use here, and Brendel is bound to find himself perpetually assailed by questions such as, “how are we supposed to go about it, should we continue to compose at all, should we compose operas, or what else?” I advised him to take these questions as the basis of a theme for discussion, together with the circumstance that he has received them at all; on closer examination it should then emerge that what we are dealing with here is an outworn and obsolete technique in which there can be absolutely no artistic content, which explains why we should not be surprised if our most skilfully composed music - has nothing to say to us.
I am gratified to discover that you, too, have felt this for yourself: what you have written is proof of this. But I should have preferred it if you had not confined yourself for the most part to those feelings aroused in you by linguistic phrases alone, but had examined more closely the truly melodic linguistic phrase, namely the individual line of verse. If, for ex., you wish to retain the literary verse as it is and sing it simply in accordance with its musically melodic content, what you will get - if you are fortunate - is simply what I have already referred to elsewhere as “prosaic melody” or “musical prose”: but it is precisely this prose which must no longer be allowed to occur if we are to remove from our - relatively superior - music the character of unmelodic formlessness. I have - I think - expressed myself sufficiently on this point in the first quarter of the third volume of “Opera and Drama”: how little I have been heeded, however, is something I am daily obliged to observe. Many people would have cause to be grateful to you if you were to make this work the object of your studies and examine it, clause by clause, in closest detail. Here alone, and nowhere else, is useful work to be done - instead of which, effort is wasted on insubstantial protestations!
Well, that’s enough theory for today: it’s not good for me! My illness has been brought on by too much theorizing, and I am now looking to artistic creativity to cure me again. I can no longer “write” about art. Perhaps you may one day get something better from me - something to hear and see! Fare you well! I shall be here for another 3 weeks, then, initially, back in Zurich again!
Yours,
Richard Wagner.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 164