Dear Friend,
I hope that in answering your two last letters I shall not overlook any point in them. Let us see if I succeed.
First of all, I beg your friendly forgiveness for the many commissions with which I coolly load you; I fear I am becoming quite shameless. But I hope there will soon be an end of this. And will your wife please not be angry with me on account of this constant packing?
Once again you have taken too seriously my remarks on the christening ceremony of your youngest son. I beg you, for Heaven's sake, to change nothing in your arrangements, even supposing there were still time. I should really consider myself highly ridiculous and impertinent, if you were to look on me as chief busybody in your family affairs! Pray be assured that you can do or leave undone what you please, without my bearing you a grudge for any one of your actions. Credit me with that much common sense. If I am peevish and fanciful, others should not be so too; of late I have indeed been peevish!
Also, I look upon your present position in the band as a change for the better. I perfectly understand that you must feel more comfortable than you did under the former opera régime. It is all right about the scores sent back from Brockhaus. How fortunate that in this case I was so obstinate! I am writing to Fischer about the rest of the music I left behind, and I thank you beforehand if you will see to the whole thing.
I have at last written to Weimar about the Goethe-foundation letter, and hope to receive it shortly. Matters proceed in a nice slow tedious way in your corner of Germany; I can't help saying that. Even the resolute X. gives another proof of it. How everything connected with this man sticks and sticks! Well, out of all this I clearly see that people have something else to do than to busy themselves about me. I really ought not to be unjust — a resolution which every day I form anew.
I am also expecting an account of moneys paid by you for me. A small arrangement will have to be made about the (unfortunate!!) copy of the Lohengrin score. When I — in the summer of last year!!! — ordered the copy through Fischer, I referred him for payment to Frau R., whom I also requested, by letter, to advance the money and deduct it from my next subsidy. But as in the November of that year the score was by no means ready, and therefore no request for payment was made, Frau R. sent me the full sum. Now I must pay the costs of this copy out of my ready money; but as things go, I must consider whether I shall not leave myself very short if I now send those costs from here. I shall receive more money at the beginning of May; so please ask Wölfel if he could not wait until the end of April for the payment of his miserably delayed score, which in consequence has become quite useless. As a return, he might keep the copy for himself in remembrance of me. (No one wants the beggarly thing now!) If he will wait till then, shortly before the R.'s send money to me I will ask K. or one of them to keep back as much as is due to Wölfel, and give it to you to settle the debt. Well, all this is another specimen of Dresden humbug! Greet the ladies to-day in your heartiest manner.
I have received encouraging news from Schwerin. Tannhäuser has been well and successfully produced there. The accounts of those concerned are overflowing with joy at the success of their undertaking. What has come of the proposed performance of Tannhäuser at Dresden, concerning which it was already a subject of reproach to me that I could take no pleasure in it?
From time to time you shall hear about my small attempts at conducting here. I may possibly write and sign a notice of the shortly approaching performance of the Coriolan overture. I may perhaps add to it the remark that I consider this kind of personal notice the only fitting one in connection with renderings which, passing from a purely musical sphere, touch upon a poetical one, instead of that extravagant praise of performances which must leave those who were not present at them quite indifferent. Baumgartner's songs have long been ordered for you; a fresh reminder is now being sent to the publishers. I ought myself to write something about them for the confederate newspaper. You shall have it as soon as it is printed; perhaps you may be able to make use of it. Can you get my article concerning the poetical contents of the Eroica from the R.'s? If you can, let me know next time.
Herwegh is worrying me about the performance of the Tannhäuser overture; I will see if it is possible, but have my doubts. The Flying Dutchman is being seriously thought of. Already a scene-painter from Munich has been specially engaged here. It is almost impossible to find any one here to write out the parts, but only an ordinary copyist; so I have had to write to Cassel again about the orchestral parts. Still I always hope that something will come in the way, so that I may at least be free for the spring and summer, and, undisturbed, be able to attend to my cure. Herwegh will go with me this time to the hydropathic establishment.
Have I now written enough? What more indeed can I tell you? It could be nothing refreshing. Still, Weber gives me hope of the possibility, in the future, of a second edition of Oper und Drama, the sale of which is highly satisfactory. Now and then I become conscious that honest X. is egregiously deceiving me. I read the Grenzboten long ago, but not right through, because I found it very tedious. Why do you not send me at once Glassbrenner's Lustige? Ah, I am tired! Farewell.
Your
R. W.
(1) I have still kept back this letter on account of the enclosure. Yesterday evening, when my wife had gone off to the ball, I read among other things your last short criticisms in the paper (No. 5); they amused me very much. The style of your brief notices seems to me a kind of genre painting, in which you greatly excel. I honestly compliment you on it. But what does our venerable Dotzauer say? If you still have my Wiland sketch, please send it shortly with the score. I am beginning to make my will!
(2) Do you often think of your Adam-like state at the Surenen torrent? The next time you are peschkering, fancy you are sitting at your desk in that primitive garb, and wonder at the respect paid to you by the highly-cultured fiddlers! By the way, greetings from the Uri-Rothstock. I saw it yesterday. What shall we plan for this year?
(3) I enclose my article on Baumgartner, which has just come from the printers. See what use you can make of it! I do not think I have been prejudiced in any way through my friendly relation to B. What I have said refers, in any case, more to the whole class than to this particular species, which in itself is tolerably innocent. It was more my object to have a slap at the silly young folk here, X. X., etc.
W. B.'s Songs (Wilhelm Baumgartner's Lieder).
The position of the lyrics of the day towards modern life is so artificial and complex, that one often finds it difficult to define the impression they make upon our feelings. Most difficult of all is this with the poems of our lyric literature, when translated into our art-music. Poems scarcely even intended for recitation, but rather for silent reading, are set to music in such a fashion that, when sung, they must necessarily appear to the poet who wrote them as something wild and strange. With a poem which, as a literary poem, perfectly answered to the poet's intention, and therefore in no way called for musical expression, the musical composition can naturally only be a special tone-poem of the musician's, having often quite an arbitrary, and in the best case only a general, bond of sympathy with the word-poem. Thus, in the case of musical ballad-compositions for our song-playing and singing public, the concern is only whether the music — i.e., the melody — be in itself agreeable and entertaining; the "text" is then only important in so far as it enables the same melody to be sung or played to the different verses. Fashion, together with the ruling fashion of singing, is the only standard whereby the agreeableness of these melodies is measured. This changes for itself alone, and without any relation to any particular poem, just as fashion in dress changes without the slightest consideration for the human figure; so, for instance, the Rossini style of singing ruled at the same time as baggy sleeves and narrow short skirts, just as to-day the Bellini-Donizetti style, with its affected feeling, comes in with narrow sleeves and baggy, stiffened, long skirts. I leave to the natural philosopher in the domain of our civilization to point out the necessity of these fashions. To become a favourite and fashionable composer of this kind is just as easy as to become a favourite and fashionable tailor. The capability of satisfying the needs of fashion, of which mention has been made, is not in the least connected with genius; and it is only by chance that now and then an individual of this class rises above the mass.
Whoever does not aspire to be a modern popular song-composer in the sense named, but who, as a musician, seeks to express by means of his art the feeling which a poem has called forth from him, so as to communicate it to others, will be compelled to preserve a far more intimate connection with the poem than this. The feeling acquired by him as a musician gives him first of all the tone-picture, in which it expresses itself with satisfying clearness; but he can only succeed in giving the necessary individual shape to that tone-picture by placing its outward form in closest relationship to that of the word-poem. It is on this path, and with this method, that we meet with Wilhelm Baumgartner; this is, without dispute, the only truly artistic direction in which the fashionable musician can move when face to face with the modern poet. Baumgartner's tone-pictures, as they appear in the vocal melody, and in an accompaniment which supports and renders clear this melody, are, in the first place, products of purely musical invention; but it is refreshing also to perceive how these pictures become musical exactly in the degree in which they are prompted by the significant contents of the poem; and this gives us the best proof that the musician's attitude with regard to the poet is the right one. These tone-poems are noble throughout, and in them all influence of modern mannerism disappears in proportion as the sensuous (sinnlich) form coincides with that of the poem; the very need of which is felt by the composer whose attitude towards the poet is a natural one. Baumgartner, if he would remain faithful to his sound artistic feeling in this direction, must end by seeking for the poet who in his poems no longer leaves anything to the purely musical initiative of the composer, but brings to him the complete sensuous and sentient germ for the blossoming of the melody; in other words, the poet who not only stimulates his feeling to musical invention, but whose verse itself supplies the living stuff for the formation of the melody. May B. find this poet in his Swiss countryman and friend Gottfr. Keller, and from the united creative power of both, may the true song, inseparable from the poem as from the melody, blossom forth; a song which is not to be found in the fashionable productions of the day, and towards which B., in the ballads before us, is aiming with praiseworthy zeal. To enter into further detail respecting these songs would be beside the aim of this paper, and consequently of my communication. On the other hand, my purpose has been merely to call attention to the characteristic difference between B.'s songs and the fashionable songs of the day, and to direct to them all those to whom so distinct a phenomenon may prove welcome.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to His Dresden Friends, Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, and Ferdinand Heine, trans. J. S. Shedlock (Scribner & Welford, 1890), No. 54