The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wagner, by John F. Runciman

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Wagner

Author: John F. Runciman

Release Date: December 24, 2004 [EBook #14441]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WAGNER ***

Produced by Steven Gibbs and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team

WAGNER

BY JOHN F. RUNCIMAN

Bell's Miniature Series of Musicians

LONDON
G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
[Second Edition] 1913

CONTENTS

LIFE OF WAGNER
HIS YOUTH (1813-1834)
MAGDEBURG, RIGA, PARIS (1834-1842)
DRESDEN (1842-1849)
ZURICH--PARIS (1849-1861)
MUNICH--TRIEBSCHEN (1864-1871)
BAYREUTH
WAGNER'S WORKS

LIFE OF WAGNER

HIS YOUTH 1813-1834.

The old world is very remote from us now, but it is worth while making a
small attempt to realize how it stood to Wagner. When he was born, in
1813, Bach had been dead only a little over sixty years; Mozart had been
dead about twenty years, and Haydn about ten; Beethoven was in the full
splendour of his tremendous powers; Weber and Schubert had still their
finest work to do. To grasp all that this means, let us consider our
relation to Mendelssohn. He died nearly sixty years ago; yet, whatever
we may think of him as a composer, we can scarcely call him
old-fashioned: he remains indisputably one of the moderns. Now, Wagner
can never have looked upon Bach as a modern. He spoke of him and his old
periwig almost as one might allude to an extinct race of animals. The
history of an art cannot be measured off in years: in some periods it
moves slowly, in others with startling rapidity. Since Mendelssohn's day
composers have sought rather to develop old resources and forms than to
find and create new ones, whereas in the sixty years that lie between
Bach's death and Wagner's birth the whole form and content, the very
stuff, of music was changed. In 1750 he would have been a daring and
extraordinarily sapient being who prophesied that within forty years
Mozart's G minor Symphony would be written. Between Bach and Wagner is a
great gulf set, a gulf bridged by Emanuel Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and
Beethoven; between ourselves and Mendelssohn there is no such chasm