FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79  
80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   >>  
eistersingers, in the hope that by this more intelligible work the public would finally turn to him, and that then the great German people would assist in the erection of a festival-building for a national art-work and thus realize his grand ideal. We know to-day that he succeeded in uniting them in this great work. The next important step in that direction was the representation of the "Meistersinger" in Munich in 1868. In the course of time Wagner dominated the stage in a manner which had not been witnessed since "Lohengrin." It has been truthfully said that there was something more surprising than the highly poetic "Tristan," namely, the artist himself, who so shortly after could create a picture of such manifold coloring as the "Meistersinger." But with equal truth the same observer of Wagner says that whoever is astounded at this achievement has but little understood the one essential point in the nature and life of all really great Germans. "He does not know on what soil alone that many-sided humor displayed by Luther, Beethoven, and Wagner can grow, which other nations do not at all comprehend, and which even the Germans of to-day seem to have lost; that mixture, pure as gold, of simplicity, deep, loving insight, mental reflection and rollicking humor which Wagner has poured out like a delightful draught for all those who have keenly suffered in life, and who turn to him, as it were, with the smile of the convalescent." Another German, Sebastian Bach, might have been named whom Wagner resembles most in that universal dominating quality of mind which is even visible in the half-ironical, laughing eye of the simple Thuringian chorister, and brings home to us the truth of Faust's words, "creating delights for the gods to enjoy." He played at that time many of Bach's compositions, such as the "Well Tempered Clavicord," with his young assistant, Hans Richter, who had been recommended to him from Vienna as a copyist. What cared he for all this wild whirl of silly fancies and boorish conceit, so long as he, a genuine Prometheus, could create something new after the grandest models! In speaking of "Tannhaeuser" he tells us how supremely happy he was when occupied with the delightful work of real creation. "Before I undertake to write a verse or sketch a scene, I am already filled with the musical spirit of my creation," he writes in the year 1864. "All the characteristic motives are in my brain, so that when the tex
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79  
80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   >>  



Top keywords:

Wagner

 

Meistersinger

 
Germans
 

creation

 

create

 

delightful

 

German

 

intelligible

 

public

 
creating

assistant

 

Richter

 
recommended
 

Clavicord

 

Tempered

 
brings
 

played

 

compositions

 

delights

 

Thuringian


Sebastian

 
resembles
 

Another

 

convalescent

 

suffered

 
universal
 

laughing

 
simple
 

ironical

 
dominating

quality
 

visible

 

chorister

 
filled
 

sketch

 

undertake

 
musical
 

spirit

 

motives

 
characteristic

eistersingers

 

writes

 
Before
 

fancies

 

boorish

 

conceit

 
copyist
 
keenly
 

genuine

 
Prometheus