M A R T I N K N U S T
In 1842 Richard Wagner made his national breakthrough with the pre-miere of Rienzi in Dresden. He went from being hardly known, a com-poser with little experience and a Kapellmeister in a German backwater, to a prominent figure in Saxon, and consequently German, musical life. More national acclaim followed in 1868 when Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg had its premiere in Munich. Wagner became widely appre-ciated and considered as a national icon, including outside the small circles of musicians and music worshippers. These events predated his international breakthrough by some years, which took place at dif-ferent times in difdif-ferent countries. During the 1860s and 1870s, the earthquake of Wagnerism, which had its epicentre in Germany, sent waves in all directions towards neighbouring countries and even more distant regions of the European continent.
Wagner’s reception in Europe was multi-faceted. Of course, in the first instance it was the musicians, music critics and composers who discussed and used his works for their own purposes. But the dissem-ination of Wagner’s music also became an issue across many other dis-ciplines, including artists and philosophers, writers and psychologists, historians and theologians. Many artistic and theoretical disciplines became involved in and were influenced by his idea of Gesamtkunstwerk and its underlying concept. Moreover, Wagner’s works succeeded in conquering not only the experts, but also amateur audiences every-where in Europe. Around 1900 his music dramas were performed vir-tually all over the continent; these included his middle and late works,
whose staging was a challenging, time-consuming and costly enter-prise.
In this essay, I would like to give an overview of this pan-Europe-an dissemination process from a macro perspective. I will focus on the introduction of Wagner’s works into the respective operatic rep-ertoires,11 consider the impact of his music on composers in different parts of Europe22 and examine the Wagnerian reception among larger audiences. Geographically, the focus will be on the musical reception of Wagner’s works in Sweden, Finland and the Baltic region. In addition, the Wagner reception in central, eastern, southern and western Europe will be outlined briefly.
The time of Wagner’s international breakthrough was a period of fervent nationalism. Each country and each national group within a larger multinational state, such as Austria-Hungary, began honing its national identity through chauvinism or with historical constructions of “glorious pasts”.33 Surprisingly, while Wagner himself was identified as a distinct representative of German nationalism, his works were considered nationalistic per se, yet not exclusively German. The political element in the Wagner reception cannot be overlooked, and to outline the nexus between it and German politics is inevitable in dealing with this topic. Over the past decades, many researchers have written about the Wagner reception in individual national contexts across Europe.
An overview shows that the reception of his works differed in each context, based on the interpretation of a work’s content and also on the particular audience, which is one of the most interesting dimensions of this topic. In France, for instance, Wagner influenced many writers
1 In all countries Wagner’s music was played in concerts and salons well before an entire music drama was premiered. However, there is little empirical information about these early performances. Wagner himself regarded concerts as a necessary evil for dissem-inating his music, a means of raising interest in a complete theatrical production. In his view, without a stage, large parts of his music were incomprehensible as they did not con-vey his whole concept of Gesamtkunstwerk. See Knust 2014, 12–15. This is why this essay will only consider complete stage productions. The Wagner reception in the mass media can only be touched on superficially here, as it would exceed the scope of this essay.
2 For more details on Wagner’s reception among composers see Knust 2009, 27–52.
3 Hobsbawm 1990; on Finland, see Fewster 2006.
when his music was first introduced, starting with Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) and continuing with the Symbolists. In Spain painters were inspired by his works, while in Germany and a number of other coun-tries, dramatists were drawn to his productions. There were numerous discussions about what exactly was the most innovative and relevant aspects of his theoretical and practical work. For this reason, this es-say challenges the existence of a single homogeneous “Wagnerism”.
Instead, the different European Wagnerisms – by which I mean some of the central figures and features in a musical context – will be com-pared and the map of the European Wagner reception roughly outlined for the first time. Thereafter, the Swedish and Finnish Wagner recep-tions will be positioned on this map. The focus will be on the reception among composers with some brief looks at other artistic disciplines such as literature and the fine arts. The dates of first performances of Wagner’s dramas and the founding of Wagner societies in the respec-tive countries will be presented as well as the intensity of the Wagner reception among the broader public. Chronologically, the focus will be on the beginning of the Wagner reception, that is, the end of the nine-teenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. In some cases, the later twentieth century will also be included.
The German-speaking countries
During Wagner’s lifetime, the musical world in Germany split between the Wagnerianer and the Brahminen or, in other words, between the New German school (the progressives) and those particularly associat-ed with the “Brahmsian” tradition (the conservatives). Composers and intellectuals, who embraced Wagner’s works and ideas from the 1860s, deliberately sided with one or the other group and its inherent ideol-ogy. The German Wagnerianertum of this period was personified by Hans von Wolzogen (1848–1938), the founder of the Bayreuther Blätter.
He was a controversial figure abroad because of his chauvinistic and
arrogant Teutonic attitudes, which showed in his texts;44 even the fatal introduction of racist thinking into the Wagner reception came from one of von Wolzogen’s essays. Von Wolzogen declared Wagner to be the regenerator of German art and of art itself. He constructed an historical cultural model that culminated in Wagner’s musical works and theoretical texts. It appears, however, that Wagner himself was not well pleased with von Wolzogen’s provocations.55 After Wagner’s death, von Wolzogen’s journal became a forum for racist ideology, and his activities were taken up by Wagner’s widow, Cosima (1837–1930).
This branch of the German Wagner reception, which had its centre in the Wagner family, is embodied in such dubious figures as the rac-ists Ludwig Schemann (1852–1938) and Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855–1927) and leads directly to the darkest chapter of German histo-ry. Even though this kind of pre-fascist Wagnerianertum was a kind of radical cell in the beginning, it cannot be denied that it had a certain influence on both the German and the international Wagner reception.
There were many composers in the German-speaking countries who followed Wagner’s concept of drama and his compositional innova-tions. In this as in other respects his work proved to transcend the bor-ders of the most varied musical genres and styles. The most prominent composers in the Wagnerian mould are, among many others, the sym-phonists Anton Bruckner (1824–1896) and Gustav Mahler (1860–1911), the Lied composer Hugo Wolf (1860–1903), Engelbert Humperdinck (1854–1921) with his fairytale operas, Felix Draeseke (1835–1913) with his monumental oratorio Christus, the New German Richard Strauss (1864–1949), the conservative Hans Pfitzner (1869–1949), the progressive Franz Schreker (1878–1934), as well as the avant-garde composers of
4 Schwartz 1999, 11.
5 On several occasions he expressed the hope that the Bayreuther Blätter might soon die;
see, for instance, the entries on 25 January 1881, 10 and 22 February 1882 in Wagner 1977, vol. 2, 675, 900, 1110. On 7 April 1882 Wagner scoffed at one of von Wolzogen’s essays and said that the text appeared to have been written while von Wolzogen was “intoxicated with hashish” (ibid., 926). Wagner distanced himself from late nineteenth-century anti-Semitism, for instance, in a letter to Angelo Neumann, written 23 February 1881 (quoted in ibid., 1234), and refused to sign an anti-Semitic petition of Bernhard Förster on 6 July 1880 (ibid., 564).
the Second Viennese School, Arnold Schönberg (1874–1951), Alban Berg (1885–1935) and Anton Webern (1883–1945). It is impossible to reduce all these personalities and their works to a common denominator. As a matter of fact, Wagner’s declamatory settings of vocal lines were not imitated abroad, but the style was consistently heard in Germany, where people intuitively understood that his Sprechgesang was closely related to the declamation of dramatic actors.66 In addition, his theo-retical texts, which were written in German, were read and discussed more extensively in the German-speaking areas than in other parts of Europe; that both Wagner’s manner of composing and his at times long-winded way of expressing himself as a writer caused comprehen-sion problems for people whose native language was not German is beyond question. However, in Northern Europe this language barrier was perhaps not as impenetrable as one might think because German was – and still is – widely spoken in Europe’s north and east and has been since the time of the Hanseatic League. When the first volumes of Wagner’s Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen were published in the 1870s, they were ordered and read in the North as quickly as in Germany.77
The West: wagnérisme, Wagnerismo and Wagnerites – Crossing the Atlantic Ocean
Of the different Wagner receptions perhaps the French wagnérisme is the best-known. It has primarily been seen as a phenomenon of French literature, culture, social and theatre history rather than as part of France’s music history. Wagner himself had strong contacts in France, and his works were embraced by a large number of French writers, such as Charles Baudelaire and Catulle Mendès (1841–1909), as well as by composers.88 Among the latter, César Franck (1822–1890)
6 About this connection see Knust 2007.
7 Salmi 2005, 148.
8 A short survey on compositional wagnérisme is given in Döhring 1997, 282–293.
and Camille Saint-Saëns (1834–1921) are the most well-known today, even though Vincent d’Indy (1851–1931) is a central figure in French music history because of his work as a composition teacher at the Schola cantorum in Paris. In his day d’Indy was the most influential of all French Wagner adepts. Wagner’s Parsifal inspired d’Indy’s op-era Fervaal, based on the poem “Axel” by the Swedish writer Esaias Tegnér (1782–1846). Originally, its action takes place in Scandinavia, but d’Indy, who copied Wagner in being his own librettist, relocated the story to southern France in the eighth century.99 D’Indy was a fer-vent nationalist and anti-Semite. He emphasized his use of Wagner’s compositional methods by publishing tables with the leitmotifs of his opera.1010 Despite d’Indy’s nationalistic attitude, his contemporaries un-derstood the title role of his Fervaal as a universal, transnational he-ro.1111 Around the turn of the century, numerous Wagnerian-type operas were composed in France, including Ernest Chausson’s (1855–1899) Le roi Arthus, Emmanuel Chabrier’s (1841–1894) Gwendoline and Briseïs, Franck’s Hulda, Paul Dukas’s (1865–1935) Ariane et Barbe-Bleue and Gabriel Fauré’s (1845–1924) Pénélope.
The first work of Wagner performed internationally outside the German-speaking areas was Tannhäuser. Already during the sec-ond half of the 1850s, Tannhäuser had various national premieres in Belgium, the Netherlands and, most remarkable, even as far away as the United States.1212 These performances, however, were not seen as
9 On the genesis and content of Fervaal, see Schwartz 1999.
10 Ross 2003, 209–213.
11 Suschitzky 2001/02, 256.
12 See the table at the end of this essay; this geographical leap is remarkable in several respects. One is that no Wagner opera had been produced at any of the neighboring larger opera houses outside the German-speaking area, such as Paris, Milan or Budapest. Moreover, the first Wagner productions outside the German-speaking area (including Paris 1861) relied on the resources of the German productions, including not only singers, orchestral players and conductors but also stage sets and decor. There was no such transfer of staff and stage elements to the United States. Like a grand opera, Tannhäuser needs significant financial resources. For that reason the Swiss premiere of Tannhäuser in Zurich 1853 became a festival. And finally, these performances are remarkable because Wagner was not yet a big name in the 1850s, not even in Germany.
marking an international breakthrough and have been largely ignored, even by Wagner researchers. The beginning of the Wagner perfor-mance history outside the European German-language area is linked instead to the infamous Paris premiere of Tannhäuser in 1861. This event came about because Countess Pauline von Metternich wanted a French premiere of a complete Wagner opera. It was Napoleon III who sponsored the performance. Wagner was thus admired by members of the aristocracy and not only in Europe, but also overseas. The Brazilian emperor Dom Pedro II was a member of the Bayreuth Patronat-Verein and attended the premiere of the Ring cycle in 1876. In France as well as in South America Wagner made his entrée through the high nobility (Hochadel), which might well have shaped his image in these countries.1313 In France this connection curbed the Wagner enthusiasm, as did the hostilities between France and Germany. Among the first Wagner texts translated into French was his malicious Eine Kapitulation, a farce in which he mocked the French theatre after the German military victory over France in 1871. It was thus not only during the Tannhäuser pre-miere in 1861 that performances of his work met resistance in France.
In 1887 Lohengrin was premiered in Paris, and the performance result-ed in further scandal as it did again in 1891.1414 However, between 1900 and 1914, his music dramas gained a foothold on the French operatic stage.1515 The important role of politics in the French Wagner reception cannot be overlooked, given the military conflicts between France and its neighbour; wars and the links between Wagner and the French ar-istocracy were decisive for the course of events in the initial phase of the French Wagner reception.
This situation does not apply to the beginning of the Wagner recep-tion on the Iberian Peninsula. Here, the composer’s theoretical texts and music dramas were introduced into the public discussion during the 1860s, after the Paris premiere of Tannhäuser. Yet some decades
13 As Schwartz (1999, 4) states for France.
14 Ibid., 1, 11–12.
15 Ibid., 12–18.
passed before the first performances of his works took place. Two conditions in particular were crucial for the Spanish and Portuguese Wagnerismo. First, the musical infrastructure was not as developed as it was in central Europe; there were few large orchestras and few opera houses capable of performing the late-romantic repertoire.
Second, German was a language that was little spoken or understood.
Instead, French was the foreign language most generally learned, and the French influence on Spanish culture is evident in how Wagner was received. Newspapers and journals dealt with French translations of his works, not with the German originals, and with French discussions about Wagner. In other words, French wagnérisme became the model – or the filter – for the Spanish and Portuguese receptions. It should not be overlooked that the Catalonian Wagner adherents in particular became very active after the turn of the century. Plans circulated to build a festival theatre for Wagner performances. This would have been the first purpose-built theatre for Parsifal after the exclusive perfor-mance rights of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus expired. These plans came to nothing; nevertheless, Barcelona became the very first theatre to perform Parsifal legally in the hours immediately after the expiration of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus rights.1616
British Wagnerism was a relatively late and relatively little po-larized phenomenon, different from the ardent discussions that took place in France and Germany. Around the time of Wagner’s third visit to England, in 1877, his side in Germany’s artistic schism had been victorious, and during the decades between 1890 and the First World War some one hundred volumes on Wagner’s work were published in English and thousands of tickets for the Bayreuth Festival were sold in England.1717 Even though a certain political variety among Wagner en-thusiasts existed at the turn of the century – from a socialist reading of the Ring by George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) to the pseudo-religious texts of David Irvine (active 1897–1912) – the English attitude towards
16 Ortiz-de-Urbina 2013.
17 Blissett 1959, 312–314, 322.
Wagner’s music was somewhat moderate. The most productive and skilled English writer on Wagner during the first half of the twentieth century, Ernest Newman (1868–1959), represents this attitude, which blended admiration with criticism of Wagner as a man and an artist.1818
At the same time as Wagner was conquering England, his works entered the repertoire of the United States. A complete performance of a Wagner opera had taken place as early as 1859, but more continuous performance activity began only in the 1870s. Wagner’s works and texts were discussed in the United States during the 1880s, and from 1884 to 1891 his works even dominated the repertoire at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.1919 As in other parts of the world, his works were considered manifestations of German nationalism, especially by German emigrants to the United States.2020 At the same time Wagner’s music appealed gener-ally to Americans’ patriotic spirit. Some American Wagner adepts even went so far as to claim that his works embodied the spirit of their young nation better than the spirit of old Europe, and by the end of the century the idea of creating a Wagner festival theatre in New York was being discussed.2121 What is interesting about the arrival of Wagner’s works in the New World was the deliberation over of whether or not his art was democratic. In the US the image of the late Wagner was prevalent – the one who sought Maecenas among the richest people of the coun-try to support Bayreuth and who composed his Großer Festmarsch zur Eröffnung der hundertjährigen Gedenkfeier der Unabhängigkeitserklärung der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika (WWV 110, 1876) for the impres-sive amount of 5,000 dollars – hardly the image of the young demo-cratic revolutionary Wagner of the March Revolution and the Dresden Insurrection of 1848–1849.2222 This bourgeois image might, however, have been congruent with the early Wagner image in South America.
18 Ibid., 317–322.
19 Peretti 1989, 28–32.
20 Albo & Gimber 2013.
21 Peretti 1989, 33.
22 Ibid., 34.
The South: Conquering the homeland of opera
Wagner’s works met with hesitation in Italy. The well-known example of Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901), who showed resentment of Wagner’s op-ulent orchestration and the structural complexity of his music, spoke for many. In Verdi’s time opera was considered a genuine Italian genre, and Wagner’s way of composing vocal lines as well as his orchestra-tion and (pseudo-) polyphonic structures were not seen as appropri-ate models for Italian composers. Wagner was aware of this image and had distanced himself from it as a young composer.2323 For him, it was not only a personal triumph, but also a national success when the first Italian performance of one of his operas, Lohengrin, took place in Bologna in 1871. Two of Wagner’s letters published in his Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen show him expressing gratitude to the Italians
Wagner’s works met with hesitation in Italy. The well-known example of Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901), who showed resentment of Wagner’s op-ulent orchestration and the structural complexity of his music, spoke for many. In Verdi’s time opera was considered a genuine Italian genre, and Wagner’s way of composing vocal lines as well as his orchestra-tion and (pseudo-) polyphonic structures were not seen as appropri-ate models for Italian composers. Wagner was aware of this image and had distanced himself from it as a young composer.2323 For him, it was not only a personal triumph, but also a national success when the first Italian performance of one of his operas, Lohengrin, took place in Bologna in 1871. Two of Wagner’s letters published in his Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen show him expressing gratitude to the Italians