Wagner in Russia, Poland

and the Czech Lands

This page has been left blank intentionally
Wagner in Russia, Poland
and the Czech Lands
Musical, Literary and Cultural Perspectives

Edited by
Stephen Muir
University of Leeds, UK
Anastasia Belina-Johnson
Leeds College of Music, UK
© Stephen Muir and Anastasia Belina-Johnson 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

Stephen Muir and Anastasia Belina-Johnson have asserted their right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.

Bach musicological font © Yo Tomita

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech lands : musical, literary, and cultural
perspectives/edited by Stephen Muir and Anastasia Belina-Johnson.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4094-6226-2 (hardcover) – ISBN 978-1-4094-6227-9 (ebook) –
ISBN 978-1-4094-6228-6 (epub) 1. Wagner, Richard, 1813-1883 – Appreciation –
Russia. 2. Wagner, Richard, 1813-1883 – Appreciation – Poland. 3. Wagner, Richard,
1813-1883 – Appreciation – Czechoslovakia. 4. Wagner, Richard, 1813-1883 – Influence.
5. Opera – Russia. 6. Opera – Poland. 7. Opera – Czechoslovakia. I. Muir, Stephen
(Stephen P. K.) II. Belina-Johnson, Anastasia.

ML410.W13W124 2013
782.1092–dc23
2013013625
ISBN 9781409462262 (hbk)
ISBN 9781409462279 (ebk – PDF)
ISBN 9781409462286 (ebk – ePUB)

V
 Contents

List of Music Examples   vii

Dates, Transliteration, and Original Language Quotations   ix
Notes on Contributors   xi
Foreword: So Much More than a Composer by Richard Taruskin   xv
Preface: From the Editors   xxxiii

1 ‘One can learn a lot from Wagner, including how not to write
operas’: Sergey Taneyev and his Road to Wagner   1
Anastasia Belina-Johnson

2 ‘The end of opera itself’: Rimsky-Korsakov and Wagner   23

Stephen Muir

3 How Russian was Wagner? Russian Campaigns to Defend or

Destroy the German Composer during the Great War (1914–1918)  49
Rebecca Mitchell

4 Prophecy of a Revolution: Aleksey Losev on Wagner’s

Aesthetic Outlook   71
Vladimir Marchenkov

5 ‘The great little man’: Dvořák and Wagner   93

Jan Smaczny

6 Wagnerism in Moravia: Janáček’s First Opera, Šárka   119

Michael Ewans

7 ‘Where the King Spirit becomes manifest’: Stanisław Wyspiański

in Search of the Polish Bayreuth   137
Radosław Okulicz-Kozaryn

8 The Reception of Wagner’s Music and Ideas in Poland during the

Communist Years (1945–1989)   159
Magdalena Dziadek

Bibliography   185
Index   207
 List of Music Examples

1.1 Taneyev, Oresteia, Prelude, opening: ‘Wrongdoing’ motif 17

1.2 Taneyev, Oresteia (Act I, scene 6), entry of Agamemnon 18
1.3 Taneyev, Oresteia (Act II, scene 19), Orestes as a wanderer 19

2.1 Rimsky-Korsakov, Iz Gomera, introduction (fig. 1), trombone entry 36

2.2a Rimsky-Korsakov, Kashchey bessmertnïy, scene i (bar 1), themes of
Kashchey and the Princess 39
2.2b Rimsky-Korsakov, Kashchey bessmertnïy, scene iii (4 bars before
fig. 93), theme of Ivan Korolevich 40
2.3 Rimsky-Korsakov, Kashchey bessmertnïy, scene I (fig. 32), tritone
sustained throughout snow-storm episode 40
2.4 Rimsky-Korsakov, Kitezh, Act III (24 bars after fig. 246), sustained
tritone at end of Act III 41
2.5 Rimsky-Korsakov, Kitezh, Prelude (bars 5–13), ‘Hymn to the
wilderness’41
2.6 Rimsky-Korsakov, Sadko, end of Tableau II, ‘the red sun rises’ 44

5.1 Dvořák, Cello Concerto in A major (B 10), mvt I, bb. 119–27 98

5.2 Dvořák, Alfred (B 16), Act I, scene 3, Harald’s ‘Schlachtlied’,
opening99
5.3a Dvořák, Král a uhlíř (B 21), hunters’ theme 102
5.3b Dvořák, Král a uhlíř (B 21), hunters’ theme developed texturally 102
5.4 Dvořák, Stabat Mater (B 71), ‘Inflammatus’, bb. 66–9 105
5.5 Dvořák, Svatební košile (B 135), ‘Maria panno, při mnĕ stůj’,
opening 110
5.6 Dvořák, Requiem Mass (Op. 89, B 165), start of ‘Tuba Mirum’ 112
5.7a Dvořák Dimitrij, first version, 1881–82 (B 127), Act IV prelude,
opening113
5.7b Dvořák Dimitrij, second version, 1894 (B 186), Act IV prelude,
opening113

6.1 Janáček, Šárka, Act I, fig. 11, b. 9, the nightingale sings 127
6.2 Janáček, Šárka, Act I, fig. 2, bb. 11–15 127
6.3 Janáček, Šárka, Act II, fig. 18, bb. 2–3 128
6.4a Janáček, Šárka, Act I, fig. 31, bb. 9–11 130
6.4b Wagner, Die Walküre, Act III, scene 3, p. 973 130
6.5a Janáček, Šárka, Act II, fig. 20, bb. 10–12, awakening love 131
viii Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

6.5b Wagner, Die Walküre, Act I, scene 1, pp. 25–6, awakening love 131
6.6 Janáček, Šárka, Act I, fig. 2, bb 19–24, Romantic style turns to
a repeated ostinato 131
6.7 Janáček, Šárka, Act I, fig. 12, bb. 9–11, approach of the warrior
maidens132
6.8 Janáček, Šárka, Act II, fig. 2, bb. 10–12, speech-melody generates
orchestral ostinato 132
6.9 Janáček, Šárka, Act II, fig. 5, bb. 16–18, Tristanesque harmony 135
 Dates, Transliteration, and Original
Language Quotations

Dates

All dates in this book before 1 February 1918 are given according to the Old Style
(Julian) calendar. All other dates are given according to the New Style (Gregorian)
calendar. Occasionally, where appropriate, both dates are given to add clarity.

Transliteration

We have adopted the New Grove system of Russian transliteration in this book:
see The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie, 6th edn
(20 vols, London: Macmillan, 1980), vol. 1, pp. xvi–xvii. In line with common
practice, certain modifications have been made within the main body of the
text, primarily to aid pronunciation: (i) common words, especially names, retain
the form most often encountered in British English (for example, Tchaikovsky
instead of Chaykovskiy); (ii) the Russian adjectival ending ‘-ий’ at the end of
names is given simply as ‘y’ instead of the rather inelegant ‘iy’. In footnotes
and bibliography, however, sources are cited in strict transliteration, or as they
appear on book covers. Whilst this policy may give rise to inconsistencies between
the main text and footnotes, and sometimes within individual footnotes, it is
nevertheless a compromise accepted by most writers on Russian subjects.

Original Language Quotations

Wherever possible, quotations from foreign-language sources are given both in

translation and in their original form. The original language of short quotations (a
few words or a short sentence) is generally given within the main text; otherwise,
original sources are provided in the footnotes. Verse originals are always given
in the text, immediately after the translation. Occasionally, where providing the
original language is not germane to the full understanding of the topic in hand, it
is not provided at all.
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 Notes on Contributors

Anastasia Belina-Johnson is Head of Classical Music at Leeds College of

Music and a member of LUCOS (Leeds University Centre for Opera Studies).
She is a musicologist, writer, presenter, and opera director. Her research
interests include nineteenth-century music, opera, Wagner and his influences on
Russian composers, modern operas written on Greek dramas, and twentieth-
century British music. She is the author of André Tchaikowsky: Die tägliche
Mühe ein Mensche zu sein (Wolke Verlag, 2013), and A Musician Divided:
André Tchaikowsky in his own Words (Toccata Classics, 2013). She is currently
working on Tchaikowsky’s authorised biography, and is editing a collection
of essays Business in Opera with Derek Scott. As opera director, she focuses
on rarely staged works; her recent productions include Taneyev’s Oresteia
(2009), Salieri’s Les Danaides (2010), and Vaughan Williams’ The Poisoned
Kiss (2012). She is an International Artistic Director of Koncerty Urodzinowe
Chopina (Chopin Music Festival), Warsaw.

Magdalena Dziadek is a music critic and Assistant Professor at the Jagiellonian

University in Kraków, Poland. She studied theory of music at the Karol
Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, and received her PhD in 1991
from the Institute of Arts of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw for a
monograph on Warsaw music criticism, 1810–90. In 2004 she was awarded a post-
doctorate degree at the same institution after publishing the monograph Polish
Musical Criticism in the Years 1890–1914. She works on the history of Polish
musical culture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Michael Ewans (MA Oxford, PhD Cambridge) is Conjoint Professor in the

School of Humanities and Social Science at the University of Newcastle,
Australia. Before retiring from the Chair of Drama in 2011 he specialised in
directing plays and chamber operas, translating Greek tragedy and comedy, and
writing books and articles which explore how operas and dramas work in the
theatre. He is the author of Janáček’s Tragic Operas (Faber and Faber, 1997),
Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck (Lang, 1989), Wagner and Aeschylus: The ‘Ring’ and
the ‘Oresteia’ (Faber and Faber, 1982), and Opera from the Greek: Studies in the
Poetics of Appropriation (Ashgate, 2007). He has also published a complete set
of accurate and actable translations of Aeschylus and Sophocles in four volumes,
with theatrical commentaries based on his own productions. More recently he
has published two volumes of comedies by Aristophanes, also in his own new
translations with theatrical commentaries. He has just completed a substantial new
xii Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

book whose working title is Text, Music and Performance in Opera. In 2005 Prof.
Ewans was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

Vladimir L. Marchenkov is Professor of Aesthetics and Theory at the Ohio

University School of Interdisciplinary Arts in Athens, Ohio, USA. His research
interests include philosophy of music, theory of myth, Russian philosophy, and
Asian aesthetic thought. He is the author of The Orpheus Myth and the Powers of
Music (Pendragon, 2009) and translator of Aleksey Losev’s renowned 1930 work
The Dialectics of Myth (Routledge, 2003). His essays on the philosophy of music,
literature, and painting have appeared in Philosophy in the Contemporary World,
Muzïkal’naya akademiya [Musical academy], Analecta Husserliana: The Yearbook
of Phenomenological Research, Hera’s Peacock: An International Thematic
Interdisciplinary Journal, Studies in East European Thought, and other publications.
He served as the consulting editor on Russian philosophy for the Macmillan 2005
award-wining Encyclopedia of Philosophy. He is currently working on his second
book, Ontology, Reality, and Play: Art as Transfigurative Praxis.

Rebecca Mitchell is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of History

at Oberlin College, Ohio. Her research interests include Russian and European
cultural/intellectual history and the historic interconnections between music,
social, and political power structures. Her current book project, Nietzsche’s
Orphans: Music and the Search for Unity in Revolutionary Russia, 1905–1921,
examines the interrelationship between nationalist tensions, philosophical ideals,
and musical life in the final years of the Russian Empire. In her research, Dr
Mitchell seeks to combine both her scholarly and practical musical interests,
offering lecture-recitals as well as academic papers based upon her findings.

Stephen Muir is a Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Leeds, UK. His
research focuses on the music of Russia and Eastern Europe (particularly Rimsky-
Korsakov and Dvořák) and Jewish liturgical music. Recent publications include
a chapter on Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Pan Voyevoda in a collection of essays in
honour of Julian Rushton (Boydell and Brewer, 2010), an article on the British
reception of Rimsky-Korsakov up to 1900 (Music and Letters, November 2012),
studies of the musical source material for Dvořák’s opera Tvrdé palice in preparation
for a scholarly edition of the opera in Bärenreiter’s New Dvořák Edition, and a
chapter on South Africa’s Jewish choral tradition for the volume The Globalization
of Musics in Transit: Music Migration and Tourism, edited by Simone Krüger and
Ruxandra Trandafoiu (Routledge Studies in Ethnomusicology, 2013).

Radosław Okulicz-Kozaryn lectures at the Faculty of Polish and Classical

Philology in Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland. He is the author
of Mała historia dandyzmu [A concise history of Dandism] (Poznań, 1995);
Żagary (Warsaw, 1997), Gest pięknoducha. Roman Jaworski i jego estetyka
brzydoty [Gesture of the ‘Schöngeist’. Roman Jaworski and his aesthetic of
 Notes on Contributors xiii

ugliness] (Warsaw, 2004); Litwin wśród spadkobierców Króla-Ducha. Twórczość

Čiurlionisa wobec Młodej Polski [A Lithuanian among the heirs of the King-
Spirit. Čiurlionis’ works and the Young Poland] (UAM Wydawnictwo Naukowe,
2007; Lithuanian translation 2009); Rok 1894 oras inne szkice o Młodej Polsce
[The Year 1894 and other sketches about Young Poland] (UAM Wydawnictwo
Naukowe, 2013); and a number of articles published in collections of works,
proceedings, and exhibition catalogues, and in Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian, and
American journals. He was editor of ‘Eurodialogue’ (Internet service produced
under the auspices of UNESCO, 1997–98) and ‘Czas Kultury’ (1989–98); in
the latter he published reviews and articles on current literary themes as well as
appendices which brought back to life works by the writers Tadeusz Nalepiński,
Roman Jaworski, and Piotr Dunin-Borkowski.

Jan Smaczny was educated at Oxford University and the Charles University,
Prague. He is a well-known scholar of Czech music, in particular opera in the
national revival and the life and music of Dvořák and Martinů. His publications
include studies of Dvořák’s and Martinů’s operas, Dvořák’s B minor cello concerto,
the Czech symphony and eighteenth-century Czech music. Diversions from the
main body of research comprise studies of Mozart and the twentieth century,
Mozart and Prague, and a jointly edited volume (with Michael Murphy) entitled
Music in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Four Courts Press, 2007). Smaczny’s career
as a university teacher was based, as lecturer and senior lecturer, variously at St
Peter’s College, Oxford, and the University of Birmingham. Since 1996 he has
been Sir Hamilton Harty Professor of Music at Queen’s University Belfast. He
was president of the Society for Musicology in Ireland for two terms, and is a vice-
president of the Royal Musical Association.

Richard Taruskin is Class of 1955 Chair of Music at the University of California,

Berkeley. He is the author of a number of influential books and journal articles on
Russian music, including Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions (University of
California Press, 1996), Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermeneutical
Essays (Princeton University Press, 1997), and On Russian Music (University
of California Press, 2009). Among many other honours, his Oxford History of
Western Music (Oxford University Press, 2005) was named ‘One of the Best
Books of 2005’ by The Sunday San Francisco Chronicle and was awarded the
Otto Kinkeldey Award of the American Musicological Society in 2006, an honour
he also received in 1997 for Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions.
This page has been left blank intentionally
 Foreword: So Much More than a Composer
Richard Taruskin

The reviver of pure drama, the discoverer of the place of art in true human society,
the poetic exponent of bygone views of life, Wagner the philosopher, the historian,
the aesthete and the critic, the master of language, the student and creator of myths
[Mytholog und Mythopoet]
Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘Richard Wagner in Bayreuth’1

Is Wagner reception even a subject for musicologists? From Nietzsche’s description

in the epigraph above, identified in Chapter 7 of this book as the view of Wagner
that inspired his Polish adepts, one would never know he was a composer. Literary
scholars and social historians have always been in the forefront of Wagner reception
studies. Most previous research on Wagner’s reception on Slavic territory has
been the work of literary historians, and Rosamund Bartlett’s Wagner and Russia
appears in a series called ‘Cambridge Studies in Russian Literature.’2 This volume
is perhaps unusual in its distribution, with half the contents devoted to musical
matters—that is, reception of Wagner by composers. But, very much as usual, the
musical contents of this volume are the coolest and the literary-philosophical the
most heated. What might that tell us about Wagner? about music? about literature
or philosophy?
With few exceptions, composers were never among Wagner’s most faithful
adepts. Even the best-disposed tended to resist. Think of poor Debussy, trying—
and failing—to expunge ‘the ghost of old Klingsor’ from Pelléas.3 Or think of
Schoenberg, often assumed by music historians (and not without reason) to count
among the adepts, and his famous essay ‘Brahms the Progressive,’ which could

1
‘Der Erneuerer des einfachen Dramas, der Entdecker der Stellung der Künste
in der wahren menschlichen Gesellschaft, der dichtende Erklärer vergangener
Lebensbetrachtungen, der Philosoph, der Historiker, der Ästhetiker und Kritiker Wagner,
der Meister der Sprache, der Mytholog und Mythopoet.’ Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘Richard
Wagner in Bayreuth’, in Karl Schlechta (ed.), Friedrich Nietzsche: Werke in drei Bänden
[Friedrich Nietzsche: Works, in three volumes], vol. 1, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen
[Untimely meditations] (Munich, 1954), p. 376.
2
Rosamund Bartlett, Wagner and Russia (Cambridge, 1995).
3
Letter to Ernest Chausson, 2 October 1893, in Claude Debussy, Lettres 1884–1918,
ed. F. Lesure (Paris, 1980), p. 55; for an interpretation see Carolyn Abbate, ‘Tristan in
the Composition of Pelléas,’ 19th Century Music, 5 (1981–82), 117–40, the best study of
‘anxiety of influence’ in music.
xvi Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

just as well have been titled ‘Wagner the Reactionary.’4 But we are all like that.
There is a Wagner hater inside of every Wagner lover, and vice versa. Think of
Stravinsky, Wagner’s Antichrist (as he loved to say), railing relentlessly against
Wagner and ‘le fameux Gesammt Kunstwerk’ in his Poétique musicale: he got
his start, and was profoundly shaped, within an organization, Diaghilev’s, wholly
devoted to ‘the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk, … for which our circle was ready
to give its soul.’5 Wagner, as his many Jewish fans will readily attest, is someone
toward whom it is impossible not to be ambivalent.
Russians tried especially hard to overcome their ambivalence and reject Wagner
outright after an initial fascination—and not just musicians. There was no greater
despiser of Wagner in all the world than Lev Tolstoy, whose late animosity was
at least the equal of Nietzsche’s early adoration and whose aesthetic treatise What
is Art? (1897) contains Wagner mockery much wickeder than Anna Russell’s,
because it is motivated by real hatred. For Nietzsche and Tolstoy alike, Wagner
represented the most powerful challenge to submissive, pacific Christianity, toward
which the one was as implacably hostile as the other was devoted. But there was
certainly no shortage of purely musical antagonism toward Wagner in Russia.
His concerts, during his single tour of St. Petersburg and Moscow in 1863,
were mobbed, successful, and for Wagner very enjoyable as well as lucrative. It
was a case of mutual exoticism. ‘Here I am in Asia, my child, actually in Asia!’
Wagner wrote back from Moscow to a woman with whom he was then flirting.
‘The Kremlin is a convoluted mass of the most amazing buildings, straight out
of the Arabian Nights: from the top you can look down on a town of 400,000
inhabitants with 800 churches, many of which have up to 5 towers: everything is
very colourful, bright, golden, domed – strange & wonderful.’6
To the Russians Wagner was strange and wonderful. His programs included
excerpts from operas (Die Walküre, Siegfried, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger)
that were as yet unperformed in their entirety or still in progress. His second Russian
concert, in St. Petersburg on 10 March 1863, was the first occasion at which Wagner
presented the Tristan Prelude joined to the Act III Isoldens Verklärung sans Isolde,
to form the ‘Prelude+Liebestod.’ Alexander Serov, soon to make his debut as a
composer with Judith (1861–63), but as yet known mainly as a St. Petersburg critic
and often written off as Wagner’s lackey, took heart: ‘The very novelty of Wagner’s
music, its unusual and unprecedented, unimaginable boldness in orchestration …

4
It can be found in Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg, ed.
Leonard Stein, trans. Leo Black (London, 1975), pp. 398–441.
5
Robert Craft, ‘My Life with Stravinsky,’ New York Review of Books, 10 June 1982, p.
6 (for ‘Wagner’s Antichrist’); Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons,
bilingual edition (Cambridge, MA, 1974), p. 76 (for ‘le fameux Gesammt Kunstwerk’);
Alexandre Benois, Reminiscences of the Russian Ballet, trans. Mary Britnieva (London,
1941), pp. 370–71.
6
To Mathilde Maier, 21/22 March 1863; Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans.
and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (New York, 1988), pp. 555–6.
 Foreword: So Much More than a Composer xvii

carried the entire audience away to the most extreme limits of ardent appreciation,’
he wrote.7 Moscow’s most sophisticated musician, though actually more of a
littérateur, was Prince Vladimir Odoyevsky, known as ‘the Russian Hoffmann’ for
his fantastic stories, but (again like the original E. T. A. Hoffmann) also a dilettante
composer and music scholar. He saw in Wagner’s enthusiastic reception the dawn
of a new era: ‘Is there a hope,’ he wrote, ‘that instead of Verdi’s strings of polkas we
will now be able to listen to real operas by such people as Gluck, Mozart, Méhul,
Weber, Beethoven and Wagner?’8
No, not yet. Most of the published or otherwise recorded comments from
listeners in 1863 attested merely to the satisfaction of curiosity. Now we know
what he’s like, most reviewers agreed, and he’s too German, or too theoretical, or
too utopian for us.9 Wagner had little chance of influencing the course of Russian
composing at the time. It was the precise moment when Russian music was going
through the process of academicizing. The best established Russian composer,
and the country’s principal musical academic, Anton Rubinstein, had long since
declared himself opposed to the ‘New German School,’ and educated his pupils,
who then included the 22-year-old Tchaikovsky, to share his view, or at least
compose as if they did. (Unlike Rimsky-Korsakov or Taneyev, about whom we
read in the chapters that follow, Tchaikovsky never came round to Wagner. After
witnessing the first Bayreuth Ring in 1876, he complained that ‘Before, music
strove to delight people – now they are tormented and exhausted.’)10 The incipient
Balakirev circle (then calling itself the ‘New Russian School’ but soon to be
christened the Mighty Kuchka) was jealous of their national independence and
their direct line from Glinka, and saw Wagner as a colonizer. They clung to Berlioz
and Liszt, non-Germans who could be upheld against the Teutonic invaders who
staffed Rubinstein’s orchestra and his conservatory.
Serov was the one committed Wagnerian among Russian musicians, but that was
seen by his colleagues as a symptom of his eccentricity. His determined maverick
stance and his abrasive personality sooner alienated others from his enthusiasms
than won them over. When he pushed the score of Tannhäuser on Alexander
Dargomïzhsky, then known as the composer of Rusalka, who was Wagner’s
exact contemporary and, like Serov, a maverick who proclaimed his idealistic
devotion to dramatic truth, he was, to his great surprise, rebuffed. In Wagner’s
‘unnatural vocal melodies,’ Dargomïzhsky wrote him, ‘and his overspiced though
at times very amusing harmonisations, something tortured peeps through: will

7
Alexander Nikolayevich Serov, ‘Rikhard Vagner i yego kontsertï v Peterburge,’
Yakor’, 2 (1863), p. 34; quoted in Bartlett, Wagner and Russia, p. 32.
8
Vladimir Grigor’yevich Odoyevskiy, ‘Pervïy kontsert Vagnera v Moskve,’ Nashe
vremya 57 (1863), p. 225; quoted in Bartlett, Wagner and Russia, p. 33.
9
See comments by Feofil Matveyevich Tolstoy (Rostislav), Nikolay Alexandrovich
Mel’gunov, and others collected by Bartlett in Wagner and Russia, pp. 29–33.
10
Letter to his brother Modest from Vienna, 8(20) August 1876; quoted in Alexander
Poznansky, Tchaikovsky: The Quest for the Inner Man (New York, 1991), p. 181.
xviii Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

und kann nicht. Truth is truth, all right, but taste is also needed.’11 Perhaps the
best summary of the attitude most Russian musicians adopted toward Wagner was
Rachmaninov’s (as quoted by Anastasia Belina-Johnson in Chapter 1): ‘still 1,500
more pages to go.’
Social realities being what they were in Russia, most of the musicians
Wagner was actually introduced to in 1863 were the titled dilettantes whom
Rubinstein was then challenging for the leadership of Russian musical life: Prince
Odoyevsky, Count Matvey Wielhorsky, Baron Boris Vietinghoff-Scheel, General
Alexey L’vov. He met them at soirées and tea parties, some arranged by the Grand
Duchess Elena Pavlovna (or Hélène, as Wagner called her in his memoirs), the
German-born aunt of the Emperor Alexander II and Russia’s reigning musical
patron.12 And here we meet a theme that dogs the literature of Wagner reception,
including this book. At the Grand Duchess’s salon, which was attended as well by
the Grand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna, the daughter of Alexander’s predecessor
Nicholas I, Wagner was asked to read the ‘poems’ of his as yet unproduced operas,
Die Meistersinger and Der Ring.13 Despite Wagner’s reputation today as the great
synthesizer of artistic media, he appeared in Russia in a dual guise: as conductor
of chiefly orchestral concerts at which his music was displayed, and independently
as a dramatic poet.
*****
This was not the paradox it may now appear; first, because the Wagnerian
synthesis, which is now irrevocably linked with the term Gesamtkunstwerk, had
by 1863 yet to appear in its strongest form (the pre-1849 Lohengrin being as of
then the latest Wagner opera to have been produced on stage); but second (and
more important), the term, as we use it today, arose in the course of Wagner’s
posthumous reception. Its meaning in common parlance no longer accords with
Wagner’s. Wagner coined the term in Die Kunst und die Revolution (1849) and,
both there and in Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft (also 1849), always spelled it
Gesammtkunstwerk (cf. Stravinsky, above). It referred in those writings not to
what we would now call a mixed-media performance but rather to an artwork that
had been created as a collective enterprise—most specifically (in the originating
phrase), das große griechische Gesammtkunstwerk, the collectively created

11
Letter written in the summer of 1856; Nikolay Findeyzen (ed.), A. S. Dargomïzhsky
(1813–1869): Avtobiografiya – pis’ma – vospominaniya sovremennikov [A. S. Dargomïzhskiy
(1813–1869): Autobiography – Letters – Memoirs of Contemporaries] (St. Petersburg,
1921), p. 43.
12
See Richard Wagner, My Life (New York, 1927), p. 856.
13
See Wagner, My Life, pp. 856–9. In one of his letters from Russia to Mathilde
Maier, Wagner testifies to more Russian social realities: he writes that the Grand Duchess’s
request to hear him read Die Meistersinger embarrassed him ‘since I had intentionally not
brought a copy of it with me, in order not to be held up at the border,’ whereupon the Grand
Duchess immediately ordered one from Berlin by telegraph (letter of 10 March 1863 from
St. Petersburg; Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, p. 552.)
 Foreword: So Much More than a Composer xix

ritual drama of the ancient Greeks, which performed the community-uniting

function he wished his own works to perform.14 The conservative Russians who
wrote about him in 1863 appear to have understood it correctly. For Nikolay
Melgunov the Gesammtkunstwerk amounted to ‘aesthetic communism’—
something from which nothing individual could arise.15 Nietzsche understood it
this way, too, as did the Polish Nietzscheans to whose Wagner-worship Chapter 7
is devoted. There we read that ‘Wagner encouraged the renewal of art and the
foundation of a human community.’ But we also find Der Ring described there
as ‘a lyrical synthesis of history and myths, dreams and truths, nostalgia and
beliefs, sighs and the inner struggles of a poet-visionary,’ and Wagner described
as ‘a demiurge who gathers all scattered elements around one centre of gravity.’
These locutions hint at the other meaning of gesam(m)t, the one that Wagner
associated not with the Gesammtkunstwerk but with what he called ‘universal
art.’16 That, rather than Wagner’s music as such, was the ideal to which the late
nineteenth-century Wagnerians so ardently responded with grandiose syntheses
of their own, in which music was generally far from the most potent or even
conspicuous element.
Wagner most nearly approached—or, more precisely, adumbrated—what
became the primary meaning of the famous shibboleth in a passage from Das
Kunstwerk der Zukunft where he describes the große Gesam(m)tkunstwerk—not
the ancient Greek version this time but its future successor—as a work that ‘must
gather up each branch [or genre] of art and use it as a means, and in some sense
to undo it for the common aim of all.’17 For Wagner this was merely a default
aspect of the Gesammtkunstwerk, which, as a collective and collaborative drama,
necessarily combined and subsumed the contributions of its various collaborators
and their respective media. This was the aspect of his theory that resonated with
the aesthetic idealism of German romanticism, which radically distinguished
the poetic idea from its material realization or embodiment. ‘The aesthetics of
one art is that of the others too,’ wrote Schumann in the persona of Florestan;

14
Richard Wagner, Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen 3 (Leipzig, 1907), p. 29.
15
Quoted in Bartlett, Wagner in Russia, p. 33.
16
See the passage in Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft in which Wagner describes
Beethoven’s achievement in the media-mixing Choral Symphony: ‘the redemption of
Music from out [of] her own peculiar element into the realm of universal art’ (Richard
Wagner’s Prose Works, trans. William Ashton Ellis, vol. 1 (London, 1892), p. 126).
17
Richard Wagner’s Prose Works 1, p. 88. The whole passage in the original German:
‘Das große Gesamtkunstwerk, das alle Gattungen der Kunst zu umfassen hat, um jede
einzelne dieser Gattungen als Mittel gewissermaßen zu verbrauchen, zu vernichten zu
Gunsten der Erreichung des Gesamtzwecks aller, nämlich der unbedingten, unmittelbaren
Darstellung der vollendeten menschlichen Natur – dieses große Gesamtkunstwerk erkennt
er [d.h. unser Geist] nicht als die willkürliche mögliche That des Einzelnen, sondern als das
nothwendig denkbare gemeinsame Werk der Menschen der Zukunft.’ (Wagner, Gesammelte
Schriften und Dichtungen 3, p. 74).
xx Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

‘only the materials differ.’18 In this soft version of the synthetic theory, Schumann
probably sought justification for his own practice of ‘translating’ novels by Jean
Paul or E. T. A. Hoffmann into instrumental music. But the tradition on which
Schumann relied included statements much closer to Wagner’s eventual ideal
of transcendent synergistic union. Schelling’s Philosophie der Kunst (1803–04)
contains an endless sentence that (both in substance and in style) might well have
been signed by Wagner; it presages not only the link between the two meanings
of gesam(m)t, but also the strictures against the contemporary opera that Wagner
would register in Oper und Drama (1851), his main theoretical work. ‘Let me just
note,’ Schelling wrote,

that the most perfect combination of all the arts, the union of poetry and music
through song, of poetry and painting through dance, and they in turn synthesized,
provides the most composite theatrical phenomenon such as the ancient drama
was, of which there remains for us only a caricature, the opera, which in a higher
and nobler style, as regards poetry and the other competing arts, would be most
likely to lead us back to the performance of the old drama with music and song.19

So that is Wagner pre-Wagner. The fin-de-siècle post-Wagner Wagner of the

Wagnerians arose out of determined steps to expand the Gesam(m)tkunstwerk,
such as Adolphe Appia’s as reported in his Die Musik und die Inszenierung,
written (in French, as La Musique et la Mise en Scène) in 1892–97 and published
in German in 1899. Appia’s innovations in stage direction and design were
inspired, he tells us, by his exasperation at the ‘outmoded’ sets, costumes,
and stagings that prevented Wagner’s operas from achieving their potential in
Bayreuth. Wagner, he wrote, ‘considered the conventional forms of staging
satisfactory – in need of reform in practice only, not in principle.’ Unaccountably,
for Appia, ‘his sense of visual form was not appreciably developed beyond
this convention,’ and therefore Appia did not hesitate to call Wagner’s visual
sense ‘a defect which explains why he failed to recognize the limitations of

18
Robert Schumann, Gesammelte Schriften über Musiks und Musiker, vol. 1 (Leipzig,
1854), p. 43; trans. Piero Weiss in P. Weiss and R. Taruskin, Music in the Western World: A
History in Documents (2nd edn, Belmont, CA, 2008), p. 306.
19
Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling, The Philosophy of Art, ed. and trans. Douglas W.
Stott (Minneapolis, 1989), p. 280. The original passage in German: ‘Ich bemerkenur noch,
dass die vollkommenste Zusammensetzung aller Künste, die Vereinigung von Poesie und
Musik durch Gesang, von Poesie und Malerei durch Tanz, selbst wieder synthetisiert die
komponierteste Theatererscheinung ist, dergleichen das Drama des Altertums war, wovon
uns nur eine Karikatur, die Oper, geblieben ist, die in höherem und edlerem Stil von Seiten
der Poesie sowohl als der übrigen konkurrierenden Künste uns am ehesten zur Aufführung
des alten mit Musik und Gesang verbundenen Dramas zurückführen könnte.’ (Schelling,
Philosophie der Kunst (Darmstadt, 1976), p. 380).
 Foreword: So Much More than a Composer xxi

the decorative methods of our stage.’20 He traced his attempts to improve upon
the Gesam(m)tkunstwerk to the bleak disappointment he experienced when,
in the first production of Parsifal (1882), the forest half-light in the first-act
‘Verwandlung’ was dispelled only to reveal a conventional ‘pasteboard temple’
that destroyed for him the otherwise perfect ‘chronotope’ (as Bakhtin would later
dub it) of epic antiquity—a mythic ‘time-location’ that created the impression
of another world, or a world beyond, both temporally and geographically closed
off from contemporaneity.21
In seeking a remedy for this deficiency and from the intrusion of mundane
realism to which it gave rise, Appia sought in effect to help ‘the Master’ scale a
crucial wall: the one that Lessing had propounded in Laocoön between the time arts
(poetry, drama, music) and space arts (painting, sculpture, architecture).22 Through
ever-fluctuant lighting Appia sought a dialectical synthesis whereby the visual
elements could become as dynamic as the aural ones, and thus fulfill Wagner’s
vision of a union that effectively undid the differences between the media: light
musicalized along with poetry, thus to perfect the synaesthetic correspondences
that allied the Wagnerian synthesis with the eventual aims of symbolism.
Once again the early German romantics were there first. In Kreisleriana (1814),
E. T. A. Hoffmann had his title character, the Kapellmeister Kreisler, confide:

Not so much in dreams as in the state of delirium that comes before sleep,
especially when I’ve heard a lot of music, I discover a concord of colours, sounds
and scents. It seems as if all had been produced in the same mysterious way by a
beam of light and then were made to merge into a wonderful concert.—The scent
of dark red carnations acts with strange magical force upon me; involuntarily I
sink into a dreamy state and then hear from afar, swelling and again dying away,
the deep tones of the basset horn.23

20
Adolphe Appia, Music and the Art of the Theatre, ed. Robert W. Corrigan and Mary
Douglas Dirks, trans. Barnard Hewitt (Coral Gables, FL, 1962), pp. 114.
21
The whole chronotope idea might be said to have arisen out of Gurnemanz’s
famously cryptic words to Parsifal in this scene: ‘Here time becomes space’ (Zum Raum
wird hier die Zeit).
22
See Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and
Poetry, trans. Edward Allen McCormick (Baltimore, 1984).
23
‘Nicht sowohl im Traume als im Zustande des Delirierens, der dem Einschlafen
vorhergeht, vorzüglich wenn ich viel Musik gehört habe, finde ich eine Übereinkunft der
Farben, Töne und Düfte. Es kömmt mir vor, als wenn alle auf die gleiche geheimnisvolle
Weise durch den Lichtstrahl erzeugt würden und dann sich zu einem wundervollen
Konzerte vereinigen müßten. – Der Duft der dunkelroten Nelken wirkt mit sonderbarer
magischer Gewalt auf mich; unwillkürlich versinke ich in einen träumerischen Zustand und
höre dann wie aus weiter Ferne die anschwellenden und wieder verfließenden tiefen Töne
des Bassetthorns.’ E. T. A. Hoffmann, Sämtliche Werke 1: Fantasiestücke in Callots Manier
(Munich, 1908), p. 66.
xxii Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

Some three decades later, Charles Baudelaire, the first symbolist and the first
literary Wagnermaniac, recalled this passage (from memory, putting oboes in
place of the arcane basset horn) in his review of the 1846 salon, as ‘expressing
perfectly my idea’ of ‘a complete scale of colors and feelings,’24 the idea to
which he would give classic, movement-inspiring expression a decade later still
in his sonnet ‘Correspondences’ from the Fleurs du mal. By 1860, having heard
Wagner conduct a concert in Paris (very similar to the ones he would present in
Russia three years later; it included one of the earliest performances of the Tristan
prelude), Baudelaire made Wagner the protagonist of his theories of synaesthesia
and the rapture thus induced. He wrote Wagner a letter in which he compared
the music he heard (as if reversing ‘Kreisler’s’ testimony of sound evoked by
color) to ‘a vast expanse of dark red,…passing through all the transitions of red
and pink to the incandescent glow of a furnace,’ its climax in white expressing
‘the supreme utterance of a soul at its highest paroxysm.’ When, referring to
a composition (probably the Lohengrin prelude) that ‘depicted a religious
ecstasy,’ he confided that ‘these profound harmonies seemed to me like those
stimulants that quicken the pulse of the imagination.’ By thus adding the effects
of liquor and narcotics to the Wagnerian gesam(m)t, Baudelaire completed the
association of religiose spirituality and sensuality that would later go by the
name of decadence.25
*****
The Wagner conjured by Baudelaire and the later symbolists, by Nietzsche, and by
Appia was the Mytholog und Mythopoet, the Wagner of the dandies and decadents

24
‘J’ignore si quelque analogiste a établi solidement une gamme complète des
couleurs et des sentiments, mais je me rappelle un passage d’Hoffmann qui exprime
parfaitement mon idée, et qui plaira à tous ceux qui aiment sincèrement la nature: “Ce n’est
pas seulement en rêve, et dans le léger délire qui précède le sommeil, c’est encore éveillé,
lorsque j’entends de la musique, que je trouve une analogie et une réunion intime entre les
couleurs, les sons et les parfums. Il me semble que toutes ces choses ont été engendrées
par un même rayon de lumière, et qu’elles doivent se réunir dans un merveilleux concert.
L’odeur des soucis bruns et rouges produit surtout un effet magique sur ma personne. Elle
me fait tomber dans une profonde rêverie, et j’entends alors comme dans le lointain les
sons graves et profonds du hautbois.”’ Charles Baudelaire, Salon de 1846, ed. David Kelley
(Oxford, 1975), p. 93.
25
‘L’un des morceaux les plus étranges et qui m’ont apporté une sensation musicale
nouvelle est celui qui est destiné à peindre une extase religieuse. […]. Généralement ces
profondes harmonies me paraissaient ressembler à ces excitants qui accélèrent le pouls de
l’imagina­tion. […] je suppose devant mes yeux une vaste étendue d’un rouge sombre. Si
ce rouge représente la passion, je le vois arriver graduellement, par toutes les transitions de
rouge et de rose, à l’incandescence de la fournaise. Il semblerait difficile, impossible même
d’arriver à quelque chose de plus ardent; et cependant une dernière fusée vient tracer un
sillon plus blanc sur le blanc qui lui sert de fond. Ce sera, si vous voulez, le cri suprême
de l’âme montée à son paroxysme.’ Julien Tiersot, Lettres françaises de Richard Wagner
(Paris, 1935), p. 198.
 Foreword: So Much More than a Composer xxiii

as well as the mystics and dreamers of world transformation, the Wagner of

the Revue wagnérienne, the Bayreuther Blätter and The Meister, the presiding
spirit of the Russian Silver Age, who inspired the writers—Vyacheslav Ivanov,
Merezhkovsky, Emil Medtner, Bely, Bryusov, Blok—to whom Bartlett and
Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal and the other literary historians who have written about
the eastern Wagnerians have devoted most of their space, along with their Polish
contemporaries about whom we read in Chapter 7, and the lonely torchbearer about
whom we read in Chapter 4. This was the Wagner whose cultural significance can
seem so oddly unrelated to his having been a composer rather than (or in addition
to) a ‘reviver of pure drama, discoverer of the place of art in true human society,
poetic exponent of bygone views of life, philosopher, historian, aesthete and critic,
master of language,’ etc. etc. And yet he could have been none of these other things
without having been the composer he was, and the littérateurs who cast themselves
as his adepts had no chance of emulating his achievements. I say this not out of any
commitment to the Schopenhauerian dogma that so inspired Wagner, according
to which music ‘gives the innermost kernel preceding all forms, or the heart of
things,’ or that it is ‘by no means like the other arts, namely a copy of Ideas, but a
copy of the will itself.’26 With these formulations Schopenhauer sought to explain
why it is that ‘the effect of music is so much more powerful and penetrating than
is that of the other arts’;27 but I think it is possible to show why Wagner’s music
in particular should have made so strong an impression on literary, philosophical,
and religious thinkers, precisely to the point where they were no longer conscious
that it was music, as the crucially active ingredient in the Gesam(m)tkunstwerk,
that was creating the effects that so stimulated their imaginations.
These are the very techniques or procedures that are usually adduced as
typically Wagnerian by those who have analyzed Wagner’s style: the freedom
of modulation afforded by the open and endlessly fluctuating ‘sea of harmony,’28
with its frequent false sightings of keys and powerful deceptive cadences; and
the building up of a musical ‘past’ out of leitmotifs over the whole course of an
opera, or a tetralogy of operas. In neither case was Wagner the inventor of the
technique now irrevocably associated with his name, but in both cases he pushed

26
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, trans. E. F. J. Payne
(New York, 1966), I: pp. 257 and 263.
27
Ibid., p. 257.
28
For the term see Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft: ‘If melody and rhythm are the shores
through which the art of Tone lays fruitful hands upon twain continents of art, allied to
her of yore: so is Sound itself her fluent native element, and its immeasurable expanse of
waters make out the sea of Harmony’ (Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, vol. 1, p. 112); The
original passage in German: ‘Sind Rhythmus und Melodie die Ufer, an denen die Tonkunst
die beiden Continente der ihr unverwandte Künste erfaßte und befruchtend berührt, so
ist der Ton selbst ihr flüssiges unreigenes Element, die unermeßliche Ausdehnung dieser
Flüssigkeit aber das Meer der Harmonie.’ (Richard Wagner, Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft
(Leipzig, 1850), pp. 70–71).
xxiv Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

it to a point where difference in degree became difference in kind. The harmonic

technique, which produced what we might call the Tristan effect after its most
spectacular deployment, is the one that so plays upon the competent listener’s
expectation of resolution as actually to evoke rather than merely represent desire,
the most fundamental of emotions. That sort of manipulation would seem to be
what gave Baudelaire the impression (after hearing that very early performance of
the Tristan prelude) that, as he put it to Wagner in his letter of 17 February 1860,
‘one feels immediately carried away and dominated’ when listening, even of being
‘penetrated and invaded—a really sensual delight that resembles that of rising in
the air or tossing upon the sea.’29 It is what Hanslick, no fan of Wagner, must also
have had in mind when he wrote, in combined wonder and fear, that ‘the other arts
persuade, but music invades us.’30
The gradual saturation of textures by leitmotifs is quintessentially the Ring
effect, for there it builds over the whole four-opera span until, in Götterdämmerung,
and especially by the third act, the texture consists of practically nothing except
montages of musical memories in which hardly a note is unfraught. Carolyn
Abbate has conjectured that it was precisely the equipping of his music with
such a store of memory—a ‘past in music’—that enabled Wagner to feel he had
disposed of the problem of excessive narration that had motivated the sprouting of
the first three operas in his tetralogy out of the fourth, even though ‘the narratives,
despite Wagner’s glee over their elimination, were kept.’31 Being built out of the
same web of leitmotifs as the portrayed action, they reinforced the impression
of a closed, unique musical time–space in which action and narrative unfolded
together in a single mythopoesis. Only the pervasive ambient music—something
only a composer can deploy—can give rise to such a closing-off of the chronotope,
the aspect that, according to Bakhtin, is peculiar to epic or myth in that it is
non-continuous with present time and space, an ‘absolute past’ sealed off but
imaginatively habitable.32
In conjunction these two aspects of Wagner’s musical technique—both of
them aimed at what Wagner called the Gefühlsverstehen or nonrational ‘feelings’
understanding’—exerted an irresistible power of suggestion, beginning with
Nietzsche’s association, in Der Fall Wagner (1888), of Wagner’s music with

29
‘On se sent tout de suite enlevé et subjugué. […] Autre chose encore: j’ai éprouvé
souvent un sentiment d’une nature assez bizarre, c’est l’orgueil et la jouissance de
comprendre, de me sentir pénétrer, envahir, volupté vraiment sensuelle et qui ressemble
à celle de monter dans l’air ou de rouler sur la mer.’ Tiersot, Lettres françaises de Richard
Wagner, p. 198.
30
Eduard Hanslick, On the Musically Beautiful: A Contribution Towards the Revision
of the Aesthetics of Music, trans. Geoffrey Payzant (Indianapolis, 1986), p. 50.
31
Carolyn Abbate, Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth
Century (Princeton, 1991), p. 161.
32
See Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics
(Stanford, 1990), pp. 419–23.
 Foreword: So Much More than a Composer xxv

hypnosis, a linkage that has become commonplace.33 That extraordinary combination

or conjunction of musical extremes was what produced the grandiose raptures and
ecstasies and hysterias that listeners have likened to narcotic or religious experiences,
making Wagner so much more than a composer for them that they were able to
forget that he was one. But only a composer could have been so much more than a
composer. Only a composer (among artists, anyway) could become a ‘Threat to the
Cosmic Order,’ to cite the delightful title of a book, edited by two medical doctors,
that catalogues all the reasons why Wagner has struck so many (again beginning
with Nietzsche in Der Fall, albeit foreshadowed at a less fevered pitch by Hanslick)
as a clear and present threat—to morals, to health, indeed to civilization—precisely
the way that Elvis Presley and other charismatic popular musicians were feared
in the twentieth century, and for the same reason: they could entrance crowds and
create communities and thus threaten social stability.34
*****
And maybe here we have the beginnings of a reason for the enormous gulf
between the Master’s ecstatic literary-philosophical reception and the cooler,
chary, often skeptical composerly reception, so evident in the pages that follow.
Composers contemplating Wagner contemplated a style; writers contemplated an
effect for which they could not name the cause, which made the effect uncanny.
The composers looked to Wagner for means; the writers and philosophers for ends.
Wagner confronted his literary disciples with grandiose unattainable ambitions; he
offered musicians implementable procedures which they could take or leave. Seeing
in Wagner only a stylistic resource did not necessarily put the lid on enthusiasm.
Was there ever a more perfect Wagnerite than Anton Bruckner, in his way? Yet
Bruckner was so uninterested in any aspect of Wagner’s dramas other than the
music it was drenched in, and so oblivious to it all, that he is plausibly reported to
have asked, after the first Bayreuth Walküre, ‘Why did they burn Brünnhilde?’35
As Hans-Hubert Schönzeler observed, no one who could ask a question like that

33
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner, trans. Walter
Kaufmann (New York, 1967), p. 166; also for a general discussion see James Kennaway,
‘Musical Hypnosis: Sound and Selfhood from Mesmerism to Brainwashing,’ Social
History of Medicine, 24 (2011); full text available at http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/content/
early/2011/10/05/shm.hkr143.full.
34
Peter Ostwald and Leonard S. Zegans (eds), The Threat to the Cosmic Order:
Psychological, Social, and Health Implications of Richard Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung
(Madison, CT, 1997). Most germane to this discussion is Chapter 10, ‘Sickness or
Redemption? Wagnerism and the Consequences’ by Thomas S. Grey (pp. 143–60).
35
This story seems to have originated, or at least been seen print for the first time,
in Robert Haas, Anton Bruckner (Potsdam, 1934), p. 23: ‘Bei einer Walkürenauffuhrung
uberraschte [Bruckner] mit der Frage: “Warum wird Brünnhilde verbrannt?”‘ See Miguel
Javier Ramirez, ‘Analytic Approaches to the Music of Anton Bruckner: Chromatic Third-
Relations in Selected Late Compositions’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of
Chicago, 2009), p. 71.
xxvi Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

‘can ever be termed a “Wagnerian” in the true sense of the word,’36 meaning, of
course, the sense in which Baudelaire, the young Nietzsche, the Russian mystic
symbolists, or the true Wagnerians we meet in this book—Losev, Wyspiański,
Miciński—were Wagnerians.
Compared with ‘true’ Wagnerians, then, the musicians we meet here were,
perhaps oxymoronically, content to be what Adorno might have called ‘gemässigte
Wagnerianer’—modest, moderate Wagnerians. They had, after all, more to lose.
It was they, not the writers or philosophers, whose individuality was threatened
by Wagner’s powerful influence. Where the writers happily emulated Wagnerian
grandeur, the musicians feared epigonism.
To imitate or duplicate Wagner’s style was a technical question, and for a dyed-
in-the-wool rationalist like Taneyev or Rimsky-Korsakov, a problem to solve.
In their operatic works, even the ones based on myths, these composers were
interested in techniques of conventional representation rather than mythopoesis.
Taneyev’s modest leitmotif technique, as described in Chapter 1, amounts to not
much more than the pre-Wagnerian technique of reminiscence. Rimsky-Korsakov’s
‘Wagnerism,’ as encountered in Chapter 2, amounted to even less, confined as it
usually was to orchestral imagery: forest murmurs, magic fire, snowstorms, and
Valkyrie rides. There is no opera by Rimsky-Korsakov that adopts what could be
described as Wagnerian formal principles—or non-principles, Wagner being the
epitome of the ‘New German’ principle that content creates its own form. Rimsky-
Korsakov insisted to the end with schoolmasterly pertinacity (as he put it explicitly
in his ‘Notes on production and performance’ to The Legend of the Invisible City of
Kitezh, often cited as his most Wagnerian opera, or even as the ‘Russian Parsifal’)
that ‘As in previous publications of his operatic works, the author insists again
on this occasion that such works are, according to his conviction, above all to be
regarded as musical works,’ by which he meant works in traditional musical forms,
to be performed with traditional vocal production (i.e., no shouting or gasping
or grunting).37 No Gesam(m)tkunstwerk for him.38 In particular, as Muir further
remarks, he mocked the very aspects of Wagner on which ‘Wagnerians’ placed
the highest premium: the supersaturated webs of leitmotifs and the ceaseless
modulatory undertow of Wagner’s ‘sea of harmony.’39

36
Hans-Hubert Schönzeler, Bruckner (New York, 1978), p. 46.
37
‘Подобно тому какъ при изданіи прежнихъ своихъ оперныхъ произведеній,
авторъ и нынѣ ставитъ на видъ, что таковыя по его убѣжденію, прежде всего суть
произведенія музыкальныя.’ N. A. Rimskiy-Korsakov, Skazaniye o nevidimom grade
Kitezhe i deve Fevronii (Leipzig: M. Belyayev, 1906), p. 3.
38
See his essay ‘Vagner: Sovokupnoye proizvedeniye dvukh iskusstv, ili
muzykal’naya drama’ [Wagner: the joint work of two arts, or music drama], Polnoye
sobraniye sochineniy: Literaturnïye proizvedeniya i perepiska [Complete collected works:
literary works and correspondence], vol. 2 (Moscow, 1963), pp. 47–60.
39
‘If character A, finding himself in a certain mood, were to speak with character B
about character C, and if in the accompanying music we hear the contrapuntally interwoven
 Foreword: So Much More than a Composer xxvii

The cases of Dvořák and Janáček, as set forth in Chapters 5 and 6, are not
dissimilar. Both Czech composers experimented with Wagnerian style, but neither
was ever wed to it. Dvořák, especially, was a proud eclectic—possibly the most
versatile of all nineteenth-century composers. What other composer contributed
major works to so many genres—opera, symphony and symphonic poem, chamber
music, oratorio, even piano music (not a major genre with him, perhaps, but it did
include the ubiquitous Humoresque). The stylistic patrimony Dvořák commanded
is as diverse as his generic output: the list adduced in Chapter 5, if presented
chronologically rather than alphabetically, begins with Bach and Handel and ends
with Wagner and Brahms, with Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Schumann in between
(and surely we can add Schubert, one of Dvořák’s most obvious forebears).
Dvořák’s extraordinary variegation, which somehow does not efface his
individuality, seems remarkably modern, as does Rimsky-Korsakov’s rationalism.
Just as plausibly, though, these traits could be designated ‘classical.’ Either way,
they offer a challenge to Carl Dahlhaus’s famous contention that late nineteenth-
century music was romantic in an unromantic age.40 If Wagner, with his profound
connection, sketched above, with the ur-romantic aesthetic of Schelling and
Hoffmann, is the standard of romanticism, then he was an undeniably great yet
perhaps unrepresentative figure among musicians. (And the enthusiastic neo-
Wagnerians in the literary world would constitute a counterexample to Dahlhaus’s
contention from the opposite side; they are evidence that the age, Darwin and
Comte notwithstanding, was not perhaps so utterly antiromantic.) The rationalism
of Rimsky-Korsakov and the eclecticism of Dvořák are easily correlated with the
‘positivist zeitgeist’ from which, Dahlhaus claims, music was ‘alienated.’41
The obvious exception among Russian composers was Scriabin, who
practically alone among his contemporaries saw himself without any doubt or
conflict in a direct line from Wagner, the only other musician besides himself
whom he regarded as a genius.42 Indeed, he was the one musician anywhere
who wholeheartedly accepted the challenge of emulating all of Wagner, means

motives A, B and C, perhaps with the addition of a fourth denoting their mood, can one then
clearly distinguish such a situation from the reverse: i.e., where C speaks to A about B, or
B and C discuss A?’ (Ibid., p. 54); ‘здание…которое все состоит только из лестницы,
ведущей от входа к выходу’ [An edifice…consisting entirely of a staircase leading from
the entrance to the exit] (p. 57).
40
See his essay ‘Neo-romanticism,’ in Carl Dahlhaus, Between Romanticism and
Modernism: Four Studies in the Music of the Later Nineteenth Century, trans. Mary
Whittall (Berkeley, 1980), pp. 1–18. The essential claim is that ‘after the middle of the
century music, in which something of romanticism lived on, was the odd art out in a cultural
climate that was predominantly anti-romantic’ (pp. 7–8). The problem with the claim would
appear to be that, as often with Dahlhaus, Wagner was the implicit—or even explicit—
synecdoche for ‘music.’
41
Ibid., p. 8.
42
Leonid Sabaneyev, Vospominaniya o Skryabine (Moscow, 1925), p. 103; quoted in
Bartlett, Wagner and Russia, p. 114.
xxviii Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

and ends alike, casting himself in the world-transforming Orphic image that all
his composing contemporaries rejected, determined as he was, in the words of
Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, ‘to out-Wagner Wagner.’43 It is obvious to any listener
that the end of the Poème de l’Extase is an attempt to surpass the cataclysmic
end of Tristan und Isolde in specific technical terms: damming up the energy of
an excruciatingly prolonged dominant preparation until it is finally discharged
in a single cataclysmic cadence to the tonic. A sympathetic listener might even
call the attempt successful. The Mysterium was just as obviously an attempt—
unsuccessful in that it remained unfinished (and perhaps unfinishable)—to surpass
the Wagner of Götterdämmerung as eschatological mythopoet.44 For these reasons,
in a move adumbrating Dahlhaus, Scriabin’s brother-in-(common)-law Boris
Schloezer characterized Scriabin as the one romantic composer of his generation
among classicists.45
*****
With scads of chamber music and nine non-choral symphonies to his credit, and
with his unwillingness to forgo a show-stopping ‘Song to the Moon’ even in his
most seemingly Wagnerian (because mythological) opera, Dvořák would seem an
archetypal classicist or pattern-designer next to Wagner, let alone Scriabin. And yet
the line could be blurry between pattern-designer and tone-poet (to reappropriate
the Beethovenian mot juste that Wagner had earlier appropriated). Consider the
‘New World’ Symphony (unmentioned in Chapter 6) probably Dvořák’s best-
known composition (well, after ‘Humoresque’). It is usually classified as a not-
quite-programmatic ‘motto’ symphony because, like Tchaikovsky’s Fourth and
Fifth, or Franck’s Symphony in D minor, it recycles themes from movement to
movement. But no other ‘cyclic’ symphony (and here we could instance many
others in the wake of Franck’s, by his pupils Chausson, D’Indy, or Ropartz)
recycles so many themes, or montages them so thoroughly into contrapuntal webs
as Dvořák’s. By the end of the finale, we are confronted by the same situation
as at the end of Götterdämmerung: the symphony’s themes—all of them!—have
become leitmotifs; everything is reminiscence, everything is fraught, and the
symphony, endowed with a ‘past in music,’ has taken up residence in the epic
chronotope. Little wonder then if, as many are now convinced, the ‘New World’
is the residue of an opera or oratorio or melodrama after The Song of Hiawatha,
Longfellow’s attempt to write an American epic to give the United States a

43
‘Wagner and Wagnerian Ideas in Russia,’ in David Large and William Weber,
Wagnerism in European Culture and Politics (Ithaca, 1984), p. 221.
44
See Simon Morrison, ‘Skryabin and the Impossible,’ Journal of the American
Musicological Society 51 (1998), pp. 283–330.
45
See Scriabin: Artist and Mystic, trans. Nicolas Slonimsky (Berkeley, 1987). For
Schloezer, ‘classical’ was equivalent to decorative—cf. G. B. Shaw’s distinction, in his
discussion of Wagnerism in The Sanity of Art (New York, 1908), pp. 30–43, between
‘pattern-designing’ and dramatic music.
 Foreword: So Much More than a Composer xxix

national myth like the Kalevala, on which it was so obviously modeled.46 It was
an obviously Wagnerian, because ‘mythopoetic,’ task, and Dvořák attempted a
truly Wagnerian solution to it, one that goes beyond the general, somewhat vague
stylistic influence one notes in many of Dvořák’s works, into a consciously chosen
Wagnerian procedure—chosen to suit the nature of the task. And the effect is
Wagnerian too: not merely in the sense that, by the end of the finale, ‘character
A, finding himself in a certain mood, speaks with character B about character
C,’ but because the music has joined Der Ring in tenseless mythological time.
How suggestive to read in Chapter 5 that during his time in New York Dvořák
met regularly with Anton Seidl, the Wagner intimate who eventually conducted
the ‘New World’ Symphony’s première with the New York Philharmonic, and
that they ‘discussed avidly Wagner’s music and working methods.’ The results of
these discussions are mainly associated in the chapter with Dvořák’s revisions to
his grand opera Dimitrij; but why not the ‘New World’? If his secretary Kovařík
reported (as we read in Chapter 5) that ‘during his exchanges with Seidl Dvořák
was insistent that Tannhäuser was the greatest of Wagner’s operas’ (my italics),
that would imply that Seidl was arguing another position. The ‘New World’ might
be evidence that Seidl won Dvořák over to Der Ring.
But if so, it was not uncritically. Like Brahms in his First Symphony, Dvořák
supplied an instrumental counterpart to a work that had flaunted ‘the redemption
of Music from out [of] her own peculiar element.’ Friedrich Chrysander,
Brahms’s musicologist friend, recognized Brahms’s intention: Far from the ‘weak
and impotent imitation’ the Wagnerians were calling it, Brahms had created,
Chrysander wrote, ‘a counterpart to the last sections of the Ninth Symphony that
achieve the same effect in nature and intensity without calling on the assistance of
song.’47 One would not claim for the ‘New World’ Symphony the same effect as
Götterdämmerung in conception or intensity. Dvořák fastidiously held back from
Wagner’s ‘progressive’ tonality—that is, the unpredictable tonal navigations on
the sea of harmony that did not circle back to port but ever sought new shores—
and in that sense, compared with Wagner Dvořák did indeed remain a ‘classicist.’
But the use of an advanced or even extreme music-dramatic technique in an
instrumental composition could seem, no less pointedly than Brahms’s example,
an affirmation of the continuing relevance of ‘absolute music’ after its demise had
been so confidently proclaimed by the New Germans and their followers. The fact
that the symphony’s music probably originated in a programmatic context does
not contradict the point. The point is actually intensified by the knowledge that a
program had been entertained and then dispensed with, for ‘absolute music’ was

46
See the four chapters in Part II (‘Dvořák and Hiawatha’) of Michael Beckerman,
New Worlds of Dvořák: Searching in America for the Composer’s Inner Life (New York,
2003), pp. 23–75.
47
Friedrich Chrysander, performance review, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 13
(1878), col. 94; quoted in David Brodbeck, Brahms: Symphony No. 1 (Cambridge, 1997),
p. 86.
xxx Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

never looked upon by its adepts as meaningless. It was, rather, ineffable. It said
something words could not say—something, indeed, beyond the power of words
to convey, and something that the presence of words in conjunction with music
prevents the music from saying.
Nietzsche acknowledged the necessity of music to the epic or mythic
chronotope, although he obviously could not have used that word for it. In Richard
Wagner in Bayreuth, his most eulogistic Wagner essay and the source of the
epigraph that stands above this chapter, Nietzsche allowed that:

If … the heroes and gods of mythical dramas, as understood by Wagner, were

to express themselves plainly in words, there would be a danger (inasmuch as
the language of words might tend to awaken the theoretical side in us) of our
finding ourselves transported from the world of myth to the world of ideas, and
the result would be not only that we should fail to understand with greater ease,
but that we should probably not understand at all.48

From this standpoint, Dvořák’s translation of his Hiawatha epic into the form
of a wordless symphony might seem a radical act of liberation rather than a retreat.
And at a certain point in his Wagnerian trajectory, Nietzsche might even have
agreed. In The Birth of Tragedy he addressed a question to ‘genuine musicians’—
that is, to ‘those who, immediately related to music have in it, as it were, their
motherly womb and are related to things almost exclusively through unconscious
musical relations’—whether they can imagine ‘a human being who would be able
to perceive the third act of Tristan and Isolde, without any aid of word and image,
purely as a tremendous symphonic movement, without expiring in a spasmodic
unharnessing of all the wings of the soul?’49
Without the rational, ‘theoretical’, (in a word) Apollonian restraining force of
words, Nietzsche implies, Wagner’s Dionysian art might prove lethal. Scriabin
certainly agreed, and hoped, in his Mysterium, to put Nietzsche’s notion to the
test. Mahler, too, nurtured hopes that people might ‘do away with themselves’
on hearing his symphonies.50 Franck gave backhanded, jocular credence to
Nietzsche’s conceit when he pasted a skull-and-crossbones ‘poison’ label on his
Tristan score.51 Dvořák, a man who related to music as his motherly womb if
anyone did, might also have been a believer—enough so, at any rate, to restrain
him from going the whole Wagnerian hog harmonically even as he adopted a

48
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Untimely Meditations (Thoughts Out of Season, Parts I
and II), trans. Anthony M. Ludovici and Adrian Collins (Lawrence, KS, 2010), p. 82.
49
Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner, pp. 126–7.
50
Bruno Walter, Gustav Mahler, trans. James Galston (New York, 1941), p. 59.
51
James R. Briscoe, ‘Debussy, Franck, and the “Idea of Sacrifice”,’ Revue belge
de Musicologie / Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Muziekwetenschap 45, special edition, ‘César
Franck et son temps’ (1991), p. 37.
 Foreword: So Much More than a Composer xxxi

more thoroughgoing Wagnerian technique in his final symphony than any other
symphonist had dared.
*****
To a certain extent, this little essay, like most forewords, has been an attempt to find
a standpoint or context that would lend coherence to a fortuitous assemblage of
independently conceived essays—essays that in the present instance do not really
isolate any peculiarly Eastern European Wagnerian discourse. Only, perhaps,
when Aleksey Losev, near the end of Chapter 4, is shown blasting Adorno’s anti-
Wagnerian qualms as ‘petty bourgeois’ and casting Wagner’s anti-Semitism as
‘love of one’s own’ rather than hatred of the other (within an overall discourse
that is, somewhat astoundingly, said to be ‘anti-nationalist and anti-racist’) do I
feel a distinctly Eastern European breeze wafting air from a planet that one recalls
with little nostalgia. Otherwise, the Eastern Europe presented herein is partial and
perhaps unrepresentative, consisting of three nations selected as if at random, with
each constituent represented, moreover, by an assortment of strange bedfellows.
This is true even of the pair of Czech chapters, devoted respectively to a
Bohemian and a Moravian. Janáček, the Moravian, identified strongly as a Slav
with other Slavs, especially Russians, and the Wagnerian flirtation his chapter
traces was a youthful fling that left few traces on the mature musical dramatist.
By contrast, Dvořák, the Bohemian, although he was on cordial if sporadic terms
with Tchaikovsky and praised Eugene Onegin very warmly,52 could appear so
thoroughly Viennese and Brahmsian in orientation as to lead to ugly politically
motivated denunciations in the decade following his death—especially from a
self-proclaimed ‘progressive’ camp whose rudest spokesman, Zdeněk Nejedlý
(later notorious as the culture czar in the early years of Communist rule), did not
hesitate to make crudely invidious comparisons with Mendelssohn ostensibly on
the basis of the eclecticism thematized in Chapter 5, but au fond nationalistic in a
manner reminiscent of the very worst in Wagner.53
That worst, usually far more prominent in discussions of Wagner reception
than it is in this book, is among the reasons why the ambivalence toward Wagner
that so pervasively suffuses its every chapter continues unabated to this day—
to the point where, asked to furnish a foreword to a new edition of Adorno’s In
Search of Wagner, Slavoj Žižek thought it suitable to title his contribution ‘Why

52
See his letter to Tchaikovsky of 2(14) January 1889, and Tchaikovsky’s answer
of 18(30) January (the former in Nikolay Alexeyevich Alexeyev (ed.), Chaïkovskiy i
zarubezhnye muzkantï: Izbrannïye pis’ma inostrannïkh korrespondentov [Tchaikovsky
and foreign musicians: selected letters from correspondents in other countries] (Leningrad,
1970), p. 219; the latter in P. I. Chaïkovskiy, Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy: Literaturnïye
proizvedeniya i perepiska [Complete works: literary works and correspondence], vol. 15a
(Moscow, 1976), p. 32).
53
See Marta Ottlová, ‘The “Dvořák Battles” in Bohemia: Czech Criticism of Antonín
Dvořák, 1911–15,’ in David Beveridge (ed.), Rethinking Dvořák: Views from Five Countries
(Oxford, 1996), pp. 125–33.
xxxii Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

is Wagner Worth Saving?’54 I have assumed, for the purposes of the foreword I
have been asked to contribute here, that it is precisely our agreement that Wagner
is, in spite of everything, worth saving that motivates our continuing efforts to
understand him in as many contexts as possible. But I have also assumed that
every study of Wagner is a study in the ambivalence that has furnished me with
my principal theme. As long as that ambivalence remains salient in this book, and
gains a few additional sidelights from the illumination of a few of its manifestations
in a previously underinvestigated corner of the world, the book has all the raison
d’être it needs.

54
Slavoj Žižek, ‘Foreword: Why is Wagner Worth Saving?’ in Theodor Adorno, In
Search of Wagner, trans. Rodney Livingstone (London and New York, 2005), pp. viii–xxvii.
 Preface: From the Editors

This collection examines Richard Wagner’s impact and legacy in Russia, Poland,
Bohemia and Moravia. The chapters focus on a period beginning whilst the
composer was still alive through to his later reception in the Communist era.
The contributing authors examine his influences in a wide range of areas, such
as operatic theory and compositional technique, literary and epistolary heritage,
politics, and the cultural histories of the regions specifically considered, resulting
in an attempt to establish Wagner’s place in a part of Europe that generally receives
less attention than in other studies of the composer. While the composer’s influence
in these countries often mirrored reactions in other parts of Europe, in some cases
it had surprising manifestations, often in a wider literary and cultural milieu
(especially in Poland), rather than always in the specifically musical realm that
musicologists often (and quite naturally) veer towards, leading Richard Taruskin
to raise the bold question in his Foreword: ‘Is Wagner reception even a subject for
musicologists?’ This fascinating provocation notwithstanding, the collection seeks
to strike a balance between these diverse reactions to Wagner in areas of Europe
less often visited by scholars, hence the scope of its subtitle ‘Musical, Literary and
Cultural Perspectives.’
Amidst the extensive literature in the English language examining the works,
influence, and character of Wagner, research into the composer’s impact and role
in Russia and Eastern European countries, and perceptions of him from within
those countries, is noticeably sparse. Only a handful of studies is dedicated to
this and similar subjects. In one of the earliest contributions to the topic, Bernice
Rosenthal demonstrates, in her chapter ‘Wagner and Wagnerian Ideas in Russia’,
how Russian Wagnerians selected, adapted, and transformed those features of
Wagnerian thought that they found most relevant to their own concerns.1 Though
the scope of Rosenthal’s chapter does not permit the detailed studies of particular
musical, literary, or theatrical works that are key features of the present collection,
it nevertheless provides a very useful general overview of how Wagner’s ideas
were assimilated by Russian cultural figures.
Wagner’s influence on Russian culture has been studied most extensively by
Rosamund Bartlett, whose 1995 investigation focuses on the composer’s impact
on Russian literary figures, theatre practitioners, poets, writers, and musicians.2

1
Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, ‘Wagner and Wagnerian Ideas in Russia’, in David
Large and William Weber (eds) Wagnerism in European Culture and Politics (Ithaca and
London, 1984), pp. 198–245.
2
Rosamund Bartlett, Wagner and Russia (Cambridge, 1995).
xxxiv Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

The main emphasis of this pioneering work is on how Wagner was perceived
and understood by Russia’s Symbolists, though it also provides a good deal of
contextual detail regarding early performances of Wagner in Russia and their
reception. Bartlett’s book reveals that Wagner’s ideas found more acceptance with
literary and theatrical figures in Russia than almost anywhere else in Europe in
the nineteenth century; her investigation established the foundations upon which
our present authors build their discussions, most pertinently those that assess the
composer’s musical influences and his role in the political life of the regions under
consideration.
More recently, attention has turned to Wagner’s influence in the Baltic states
and Scandinavia, notably in Hannu Salmi’s 2005 book Wagner and Wagnerism.3
Salmi explores how Wagner’s operas were performed and received in the theatres
of Sweden, Finland, and the Baltic provinces, and how excerpts from them were
arranged for amateur performances in private homes. Luca Sala’s collection The
Legacy of Richard Wagner, published in 2012, approaches Wagner’s impact
from the duel perspectives of aesthetical influence and reception in a variety
of countries.4 Notably, Alistair Wightman provides an insight into the musical
consequences of Wagner in Poland, noting that for various (mostly quite practical)
reasons Polish composers took much longer to react to the German composer than
most of their European counterparts.5 In this light, the broader literary and cultural
Polish reactions to Wagner set out in Chapters 7 and 8 of the present volume
take on particular significance. Sala’s volume also contains Pauline Fairclough’s
investigation into Stalinist Russia’s response to Wagner in which she concludes
that, while probably never actually banned officially, Wagner’s music was often
restricted by the self-censorship of opera theatre directors, owing to the oppressive
nature of the regime’s interference.6 Excellently researched and written, these
earlier contributions to the topic in hand provide a solid foundation for our
investigation of Wagner in the neighbouring countries featured in the present
volume – Russia, Poland, and the Czech lands.
Wagner in Russia, Poland, and the Czech Lands seeks to expand upon the
studies outlined above (and many others, of course), and hopes to stimulate further
related research in the process. Alongside Anglophone authors who will be familiar
to many readers, contributions from authors based in Poland are featured, giving
a valuable insight into a tradition of Wagner scholarship not usually accessible
to most readers. Arguably, Wagner has exerted a greater long-term influence on

3
Hannu Salmi, Wagner and Wagnerism in Nineteenth-Century Sweden, Finland, and
the Baltic Provinces: Reception, Enthusiasm, Cult (Rochester, 2005).
4
Luca Sala (ed.), The Legacy of Richard Wagner: Convergences and Dissonances in
Aesthetics and Reception (Turnhout, 2012).
5
Alistair Wightman, ‘Reactions to the Music of Wagner in Poland’, in Sala (ed.), The
Legacy of Richard Wagner, pp. 269–88.
6
Pauline Fairclough, ‘Wagner Reception in Stalinist Russia’, in Sala (ed.), The
Legacy of Richard Wagner, pp. 309–26.
 Preface: From the Editors xxxv

wider European culture than any other composer of the nineteenth century, and
his impact is far-reaching. With regard to Russia, this impact is considered in the
first four chapters of the book, beginning with two composer-based studies, before
proceeding to broader analyses of Russian Wagner reception before, during, and
after the First World War. When Wagner’s writings and compositions emerged in
Russia, they divided opinions and even friendships, and no musician, artist, or
writer in Russia was left indifferent to his artistic endeavours. While his ideas and
works appealed to and excited Russian audiences, amateur musicians, writers, and
visual artists, some professional composers and critics struggled to relate to them.
Anastasia Belina-Johnson’s opening chapter offers an insight into how Wagner
continued, both during his lifetime and after his death, to influence even such
seemingly conservative Russian musicians as Sergey Ivanovich Taneyev (1856–
1915). By exploring Taneyev’s ‘road to Wagner’ Belina-Johnson illuminates a
number of lesser-known areas of Russian music for the stage, and thus contributes
to building a bigger picture of Wagner and his impact on Russian music. Stephen
Muir’s contribution offers a second musically focussed investigation, and draws
together previous threads linking Nikolay Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–
1908) and Wagner by examining Rimsky-Korsakov’s evolving attitudes towards
the German composer and the impact it had upon his own operatic output. Rimsky-
Korsakov was the longest-lived of all the so-called Nationalist composers except
Balakirev, and his changing perspectives represent a kind of microcosm of many
Russian composers’ musical responses to Wagner and his operas, which they
found both musically stimulating and ideologically challenging at the same time.
Rebecca Mitchell’s intellectual historical approach examines how musical,
literary, and philosophical periodicals interpreted and reinterpreted Wagner’s
significance over the course of the Great War. She shows how this reinterpretation
led to Wagner being imagined as a figure of both Russia’s salvation and her
destruction, and to Parsifal being claimed as a uniquely Christian, and therefore
Russian, work. Mitchell explores the extensive critical literature on Wagner during
the 1914–18 war, offering a commentary on the legacy of the German composer
and his Russian reception, and setting the context for the next chapter by Vladimir
Marchenkov. Marchenkov examines the writings of Aleksey Losev (1893–1988),
revealing an idiosyncratic interpretation of Richard Wagner’s philosophy of art. A
philosopher by training, Losev was an intellectual, spiritual, and cultural heir to
the aesthetics of the Russian ‘Silver Age’ of the first two decades of the twentieth
century. He praised Wagner’s operatic output for a holistic aesthetic in which myth
and spontaneous dialectics work seamlessly together.
In the Czech lands, examination of Wagner’s influences returns to specifically
musical considerations, and especially questions of operatic approach. In his
wide-ranging chapter, Jan Smaczny provides a fascinating insight into Wagner’s
own recollections of Bohemia, before advancing a systematic consideration of
the assimilation of the Wagnerian ‘lingua franca’ by Antonín Dvořák (1841–
1904), considering in particular its effect on Dvořák’s later operas, Čert a Káča
[The Devil and Kate, 1899], Rusalka (1901), and Armida (1904). Smaczny
xxxvi Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

locates Wagner’s influence as a fundamental and largely beneficial driving force

in Dvořák’s mature stage works. A less clear-cut picture emerges from Michael
Ewans’s assessment of Wagner in Moravia, which discusses Leoš Janáček’s
first stage work Šárka (1887), a subject rejected by Dvořák but taken up
enthusiastically by Janáček (1854–1928), resulting in a Wagnerian opera on an
unprecedented scale for Janáček and his countrymen. Ewans’s chapter discusses,
with examples, the tension in Šárka between Wagnerism and Janáček’s own
emerging style, demonstrating that although composed in a lush post-Wagnerian
idiom, Šárka is nevertheless also replete with the very different motifs and
stylistic mannerisms of Janáček’s mature operas.
Moving from Moravia to Poland, attention shifts to a Wagnerian artistic
legacy that is primarily cultural, literary, and scholarly, rather than specifically
musical. As Magdalena Dziadek explains in Chapter 8, Poland’s distinctively
literary reception of Wagner was ‘typical of a geographical area that at the time
played a peripheral role in relation to both the West and the East of Europe’.7
Until the composers discussed by Wightman,8 argues Dziadek, critics and
musicians tended to focus on Wagner’s writings, giving less attention than one
might imagine to his actual music. In this vein, Radosław Okulicz-Kozaryn
demonstrates, in Chapter 7, how one of the leading Polish critics of the late
nineteenth century, Stanisław Wyspiański (1869–1907), sought to create a
Polish Bayreuth, drawing inspiration simultaneously from Wagner and from
the grandiose vision of Polish history, culture, and literary identity promulgated
in the poem Król Duch [The King Spirit] by the so-called father of modern
Polish drama, Juliusz Słowacki (1809–49). Polish critics ranked Wagner
alongside the great Polish Romantic authors as one of the leading spirits of
humanity, a kinship reflected in their extravagant literary, architectural, and
theatrical projects. Continuing along similar lines, and turning attention
firmly towards the modern era, Magdalena Dziadek’s overview of Wagner’s
reception in Communist Poland (1945–89) considers Polish performances of
Wagner’s stage works in the context of an initial post-war, anti-German avant-
garde resentment. Dziadek demonstrates how debates arising around Poland’s
millennial celebrations in 1966, which questioned the very essence of the
nation’s cultural identity, paved the way for a resurgence of interest in Wagner
towards the end of the Communist era.
We hope that, as the bicentenary of the composer’s birth draws to a close, this
interdisciplinary collection of essays offers a worthwhile contribution to Wagner
studies, and provokes further research into Wagner’s wider-reaching impact not
only on music, but also on politics, philosophy, and cultural and literary criticism.
As Russianists, we also hope that interest in Wagner’s impact upon Russia, the
Soviet Empire, and the countries once grouped together as ‘Eastern Europe’ (and,
indeed, other regions not yet covered in much detail in the scholarly literature)

7
See Chapter 8, page 161.
8
See above, note 5.
 Preface: From the Editors xxxvii

might be rekindled, since these are clearly areas that still hold extensive research
opportunities.
A volume such as this quite obviously represents the labours of far more than
its two editors alone. First and foremost, our gratitude is extended to our six fellow
contributors, without whose hard work and quick responses (often with very little
notice or turnaround time) the book would not exist in any form. We know that
many of them put aside other projects and prioritised this one, for which we are
ever grateful. We are similarly indebted to Prof. Richard Taruskin who graciously
agreed to write the Foreword, and we wish to thank him warmly for his time,
expert advice, and kind support in this and many other endeavours.
We also take this opportunity to pay tribute to Prof. Derek Scott, at the time
of writing Head of the School of Music, University of Leeds, for his unwavering
support, guidance, and faith in us from the initial stages of planning and writing of
this book. Two anonymous reviewers provided extremely helpful and constructive
advice, which we happily took on board. Other colleagues at Leeds and elsewhere
who have lent their support and time (and sometimes their personal resources)
include Michael Allis, Lidia Ader, Elena Nalivaeva, Svetlana Nadler, Gregory
Halbe, Tim Banks, and Ian Sapiro; Duncan Fielden processed the music examples
for Chapter 5 with his usual expertise and attention to detail. Prof. Julian Rushton
helped immensely with the editing of one of the chapters, far above and beyond
the call of duty. Sophia Allef and Claire Marsh are acknowledged warmly for their
invaluable work compiling the index. The School of Music Research Committee
awarded a period of research leave to Dr Stephen Muir, allowing him the time
and space to complete this and several other projects. And of course Laura Macy,
Emma Gallon, Maria Anson, Pam Bertram and their colleagues at Ashgate have
been invaluable for their expert guidance throughout the whole process, for
speedily answering questions, no matter how big or small, and patiently awaiting
delivery of the manuscript.
Finally, we both wish to extend our gratitude to our families, who deserve
our heartfelt thanks for their support, understanding, and tolerance throughout the
entire process of the book’s creation.
This page has been left blank intentionally
 Chapter 1
‘One can learn a lot from Wagner, including
how not to write operas’: Sergey Taneyev
and his Road to Wagner
Anastasia Belina-Johnson

Musicologists do not often, if at all, associate the name of Sergey Taneyev (1856–
1915) with Richard Wagner, and no published study on this aspect of Taneyev’s
musical life exists. However, Wagner’s music did not simply interest Taneyev; it
quite literally led to his changing his life and career when he attended the Russian
première of Der Ring des Nibelungen in Moscow in 1889.
While Taneyev’s contemporaries were very quick to notice Wagnerian
influences in his opera (their reviews will be examined later in this chapter), Soviet
musicological literature did not seek to examine in detail Wagnerian influences
in Taneyev’s music. Even those scholars who mentioned the subject contradict
each other and differ in opinion regarding Taneyev’s attitude toward Wagner. The
Russian musicologist Grigory Bernandt, for example, believed that Taneyev’s final
judgement on Wagner was negative, therefore neglecting to look for his influences
in Taneyev’s music.1 Svetlana Savenko and Lyudmila Korabel’nikova pointed out
certain similarities between Taneyev’s opera Oresteia and Wagner’s music dramas,
but only briefly, while still believing in his lack of interest in the German composer.2
Taneyev’s student Leonid Sabaneyev (1881–1968) wrote in some detail
about Taneyev and his discovery of Wagner.3 His account suggests that in the
musical Moscow of the 1890s Wagner was ‘a kind of a musical “antichrist”’,
and even brief acquaintance with his works was frowned upon.4 This contradicts

1
Grigory Bernandt, S. I. Taneyev: monografiya [S. I. Taneyev: monograph] (Moscow,
1983), pp. 119–21.
2
Svetlana Savenko, Sergey Ivanovich Taneyev (Moscow, 1984), p. 87; however,
Savenko noted only thematic similarities of ‘fire music’ in Taneyev and Wagner, while
Korabel’nikova, in her 23-page chapter on Taneyev’s Oresteia, mentions Wagner towards
the end. In one short paragraph she cites Taneyev’s letter to Tchaikovsky as proof that
Taneyev was not interested in Wagner’s work. Lyudmila Korabel’nikova, Tvorchestvo S.
I. Taneyeva: istoriko-stilisticheskoye issledovaniye [Taneyev’s works: historico-stylistic
investigation] (Moscow, 1986), pp. 98–121 (particularly p. 120).
3
Sabaneyev, Vospominaniya o Taneyeve [Memories of Taneyev] (Moscow, 2003).
4
Ibid., p. 76.
2 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

somewhat Herman Laroche’s account of Wagnerism in Russia at the time, as

discussed below, from which it is clearly obvious that even those who did not like
Wagner attended performances of his music dramas and other works. Sabaneyev
wrote that Moscow musicians revered the names of Anton Rubinstein, Glinka,
Tchaikovsky, and the old European masters, and Wagner simply did not fit into
that picture.5 He compared Taneyev to Wagner by discussing both composers’ aim
of creating beautiful music rationally.6 Sabaneyev believed that Wagner arrived at
the same results as Taneyev via a different path, starting out ‘with a genius without
talent’ [c гением без таланта], which he brought forth only with a ‘terrible effort’
[cтрашным напряжением].7 Sabaneyev’s accounts, although very interesting,
are not always chronologically accurate – he was writing the book more than 30
years after some of the events took place. Fortunately, some of them were also
mentioned by Taneyev himself and by his friends and colleagues, and can be easily
restored from their writings. These accounts will be examined later in the chapter.
Outside Russia, Rosamund Bartlett assumed in Wagner and Russia that if
Taneyev was indeed indifferent to Wagner he would not have spent over two weeks
in Berlin in 1903, obsessed with trying to obtain tickets for every performance of
Wagner’s music dramas. The broader focus of her book, however, did not allow
any further investigation of Taneyev’s interest in Wagner’s work. As this brief
literature overview shows, regardless of how the subject of Taneyev and Wagner
has been introduced in music literature, it has never been examined in detail. This
chapter seeks the redress this issue.
Using Taneyev’s correspondence and diaries as sources alongside the writings
of contemporary commentators, I explore Taneyev’s interest in Wagner, and
argue that this ‘closet’ Wagnerian was much more receptive to ‘the music of the
future’ than previously suggested. I trace Taneyev’s journey to Wagner, from his
first documented references to Wagner’s music dramas, through reluctant but
simultaneously curious examination of Tristan und Isolde, to his final arrival
at complete and unreserved admiration of Parsifal. The chapter illustrates how
Taneyev slowly discovered Wagner and how Wagner’s ideas were reflected in
Oresteia; through Taneyev’s reception of Wagner, it offers a fuller perspective into
how Wagner influenced Russian music.

‘Next station: Wagner’8

Taneyev probably first encountered Wagner’s name while a student at the Moscow
Conservatoire. His first piano teacher, Eduard Langer (1835–1905), was a great

5
Ibid., pp. 76–7.
6
Ibid., p. 30.
7
Ibid.
8
Entry in Taneyev’s journal dated 18 June 1877. Quoted in Sergey Ivanovich Taneyev:
lichnost’, tvorchestvo i dokumentï: yego zhizni: k 10-ti letiyu so dnya yego smerti [Taneyev:
 ‘One can learn a lot from Wagner, including how not to write operas’ 3

admirer of Wagner’s music, and when Taneyev began to study with him in 1866,
still remembered Wagner’s visit to Russia in 1863.9 Another member of staff at
the Conservatoire, Karl Klindworth (1830–1916), knew Wagner personally, and
published piano arrangements of Wagner’s music dramas, the scores of which he
received directly from the composer.10 Klindworth was present at the first Bayreuth
Festival, and his Wagnerian ardour was so great that even Tchaikovsky refrained
from criticising Wagner while in his company. It is very likely that Taneyev would
have played through Klindworth’s piano reductions himself, with fellow students,
or maybe even with Langer.
Taneyev almost certainly also discussed Wagner with Tchaikovsky,
particularly after the latter’s trip to Bayreuth as a correspondent of the Russkiye
vedomosti [Russian news] in 1876.11 Wagner figured in their correspondence on
various occasions, and Tchaikovsky’s own thoughts about Wagner must at the
very least have interested, if not influenced, Taneyev. Nikolay Rubinstein (1835–
81) – Director of the Moscow Conservatoire, Taneyev’s second piano teacher,
and Tchaikovsky’s close friend – consistently included Wagner’s works in the
concerts of the Moscow branch of the Russian Musical Society.12 His own interest
in Wagner’s works would have been a feature of many conversations between
himself, Tchaikovsky, and Taneyev, as the three men often spent time together in
long discussions about music.
Taneyev’s first documented reference to Wagner came from Paris, where he
spent eight months between October 1876 and June 1877 practising the piano,
visiting museums and art galleries, and meeting with French musicians. This period
was very important for the young musician, who began to look for inspiration
for his compositions and develop his aesthetic ideas. He was befriended by the
famous Russian writer Ivan Turgenev (1818–83), who lived in Paris at the time,
and who was present at the infamous Tannhäuser première with a whistle in his
pocket ‘just in case’.13 Although Turgenev did not hold Wagner in great esteem, he
was acquainted with many musicians, writers, and artists who admitted to being
influenced by the German composer. He introduced Taneyev to one of Wagner’s

personality, works and documentation of his life: 10 years since his death], ed. Konstantin
Kuznetsov (Moscow and Leningrad, 1925), p. 75. Hereafter: Kuznetsov 1925.
9
Nikolay Kashkin, Sergey Ivanovich Taneyev i Moskovskaya koservatoriya [Sergey
Ivanovich Taneyev and the Moscow Conservatoire] Muzïkal’nïy sovremennik 8 (1916),
pp. 23–32, (here pp. 7–8). See also Bernandt, S. I. Taneyev, pp. 17–18.
10
In the first instance, see John Warrack and Alan Walker, ‘Klindworth, Karl’, Grove
Music Online, ed. Laura Macy, www.oxfordmusiconline.com [accessed 2 November 2012].
11
‘Bayroitskie torzhestva’ [Bayreuth festivities], Russkiye vedomosti (1876), 13 May;
3 August; 4 August; 14 August; 18 August.
12
Rosamund Bartlett, ‘Tchaikovsky and Wagner: A Reassessment’, in Alexandar
Mihailovic (ed.), Tchaikovsky and His Contemporaries (New York, 1999), pp. 95–116.
13
V.E. Vatsuro et al. (eds), I. S. Turgenev v vospominaniyah sovremennikov [I. S.
Turgenev as remembered by his contemporaries] (2 vols, Moscow, 1983), vol. 2, p. 183.
4 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

admirers, Émile Zola (1840–1902), and the singer Pauline Viardot (1821–1910)
and her close musical circle.14
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921), whom Taneyev met briefly a year earlier
during the Frenchman’s visit to Russia in 1875, introduced him to his students
Vincent d’Indy (1851–1931) and César Franck (1822–90), and his younger
colleagues Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924) and Henri Duparc (1848–1933). Saint-
Saëns was one of the first French composers to appreciate and defend Wagner’s
music dramas against the attack of others in the early 1870s.15 But following his
visit to Bayreuth in 1876 as a correspondent of L’Estafette, Saint-Saëns admitted
that despite admiring Wagner’s work, he could not be called a Wagnerian, and
his writings displayed more objectivity in his judgements.16 His level-headed
approach was contrasted by the passionate admiration of Wagner displayed by
Fauré, Duparc, d’Indy, and Franck. D’Indy returned from Bayreuth in 1876
overwhelmed by Wagner’s music, and Wagnerian influences began to permeate the
music of the rest of the group. Taneyev was only five years younger than d’Indy,
and they naturally formed a close bond. In the evenings, the group gathered to play
and discuss the music of various composers, Wagner included, and the young and
impressionable Taneyev eagerly absorbed new ideas.17
At the same time, Taneyev frequented the concerts of Jules Pasdeloup (1819–
87), a conductor who, along with playing the music of Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart,
Weber, and Mendelssohn, promoted German and French contemporary composers,
and was a passionate supporter of Wagner. Taneyev was also a welcome guest at
the home of the Russian writer and thinker Alexander Herzen (1812–70), who
was responsible for formulating, in print, political ideas that ultimately led to
the emancipation of the serfs in Russia in 1861. Herzen’s daughter Olga adored
Wagner’s music, and seized every opportunity to see performances of his works.
Herzen himself admired Wagner’s theoretical writings but was not partial to his
music, and expressed his criticisms of Wagner’s musical and theatrical ideas,
unequivocally stating that in practice his theories would not work.18 Taneyev’s

14
Savenko, Sergey Ivanovich Taneyev, pp. 32–24; P. I. Tchaikovsky, S. I. Taneyev:
Pis’ma [P. I. Tchaikovsky, S. I. Taneyev: letters], ed. Vladimir Zhdanov (Moscow, 1951),
p. 386, letter to his parents dated 16 May 1877. Hereafter referred to as Pis’ma.
15
Steven Huebner, French Opera at the Fin de Siècle: Wagnerism, Nationalism, and
Style (Oxford: 1999), pp. 198–9.
16
Ibid., p. 199.
17
Savenko, Sergey Ivanovich Taneyev, pp. 32–4; Korabel’nikova, S. I. Taneyev
v moskovskoy konservatorii, pp. 10–11; see also Bernandt, S. I. Taneyev, p. 43 (a fuller
account of Taneyev’s Parisian sojourn appears on pp. 35–45). See also Taneyev’s letters to
his parents, Pis’ma, pp. 380–86.
18
Despite this, after reading Gesamtkunstwerk Herzen wrote to Wagner that it was
‘an excellent work’, in which he ‘wonderfully understood the interrelationship of all arts,
which must unite in one organic creation’. Cited in Abram Gozenpud, Rikhard Vagner i
russkaya kul’tura [Richard Wagner and Russian culture] (Leningrad, 1990), p. 7.
 ‘One can learn a lot from Wagner, including how not to write operas’ 5

frequent visits to Herzen and his daughter thus included taking part in debates
on Wagner and hearing the writer’s often unfavourable evaluations of Wagner’s
aesthetic principles, contrasted by Olga’s defences of his music.
Spending almost a year in this stimulating environment prompted Taneyev to
put his own thoughts on paper. On the way back to Russia, he sketched a plan for
the next few years in stages, or, as he called them, ‘stations’:

I am proficient in harmony and counterpoint. [I know] partly instrumental form,

and less – instrumentation. I do not know operatic style. The closest station:
study Mozart’s operatic forms and his instrumentation – for this, [I] must write
an act of an opera, using the scores of Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute as
examples. At the same time, [I must] look frequently into Gluck’s operas. What
is the next station? Study of Wagner: to learn by memory one of his Nibelungs
and travel to Germany to hear it.19

Music was not the only ‘station’ – Taneyev also wanted to study the history of
European countries and ancient Greece. Two years after laying down his plan he
wrote to Tchaikovsky that he still did not know Wagner.20 He did attend concerts
featuring Wagner’s music, but serious study of the composer was still ahead of
him. Meanwhile, he pursued another part of his plan, taking a course of lectures
in antique history at the Moscow Conservatoire given by his colleagues Yuriev
and Korelin in 1883. In his notes on ‘Aristotle on Tragedy’,21 Taneyev recorded
a number of remarks on the characters of Orestes and Clytemnestra for his opera
Oresteia, which he started composing in earnest four years later in 1887. While
Taneyev worked on his opera Oresteia in early 1887, he often visited Tchaikovsky
to play what he had written, but there are no surviving references to the opera or
to Wagner in his correspondence until 1889.
After accepting the post of Director of the Moscow Conservatoire in 1885,
Taneyev could compose only during the summer holidays: during the academic
year his days were filled with administrative duties, teaching, and the need to
rescue the institution from its ever-present financial debt. It is not surprising that

19
‘Я владею свободно гармонией и контрапунктом. Отчасти инструментальной
формой. Менее инструментовкой. Оперного стиля не знаю. Ближайшая станция:
Изучить оперные реформы Моцарта и его инструментовку – для этого написать акт
оперы, имея перед собой партитуру Дон-Жуана и Волшебной флейты. В то же время
почаще заглядывать в оперы Глука. Какая следущая станция? Изучение Вагнера:
выучить наизусть одну из его Нибелунгов и поехать в Германию слушать.’ Kuznetsov
1925, p. 75; also cited in Savenko, Sergey Ivanovich Taneyev, p. 35, and Bernandt, S. I.
Taneyev, pp. 45–6.
20
Pis’ma. Letter to Tchaikovsky dated 28 December 1879, p. 44.
21
Klin archive, B12, No. 105.
6 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

Taneyev had little time to do anything else besides performing his duties as the
head of the institution – his efforts reaped great results and speak for themselves.22
As for Wagner, 10 years later, after setting out his plan to study his music,
Taneyev obviously did not get very far: when his close friend Arensky joined
the Wagner Society in 1886 in Moscow, Taneyev wrote to congratulate him, but
expressed his lack of understanding: ‘When there is Mozart, how is it possible
to pay attention to Wagner?’23 He informed Arensky that he was working on a
translation of Handel’s Israel in Egypt, which is ‘better than your Meistersingers’
[это получше твоих Мейстерзингеров], and had rehearsed Don Giovanni, ‘also
no comparison with your Wagner’ [это тоже не чета твоему Вагнеру], with
singers from the Conservatoire.24
Such a slow start learning Wagner’s music can be explained by a combination
of Taneyev’s new commitments and interests. After his return from Paris, his
acceptance of the post of Professor at the Moscow Conservatoire demanded his
full attention and left little spare time. This was also a period during which he
became interested in early music and dedicated any remaining time to studying
the works of the Netherlands composers, along with serious study of counterpoint.
Much effort during his professorship also went into the study and organisation of
performances of Mozart’s and Handel’s works with his students, and as Director
of the Conservatoire from 1885 he was entirely consumed by teaching and
administrative duties.

The Year of Change

The year 1889 was pivotal for Wagner’s music in Russia, where the German
theatre troupe headed by Wagner’s friend, the Jewish impresario Angelo Neumann
(1838–1910), performed the complete Ring for the first time in Russia. All the
leading Russian musicians were present at the performances, and many went as
far as attending all rehearsals, including, for example, Rimsky-Korsakov and
Glazunov, who listened with scores in hand. Glazunov wrote to Tchaikovsky after
hearing Siegfried that he was ‘rarely in such a state of enthusiasm as today’,25 and

22
For a detailed account of Taneyev’s activities in the Moscow Conservatoire as
its student, then professor and Director, see Korabel’nikova, S. I. Taneyev v moskovskoy
konservatorii.
23
‘Когда существует Моцарт, можно ли обращать внимание на Вагнера!’ V.
Kiselyov, Tamara Livanova, and Vladimir Protopopov (eds), S. I. Taneyev: materialï i
documenty [S. I. Taneyev: materials and documents] (Moscow, 1952). Letter to Arensky
dated 8 October 1886, p. 133. Hereafter: Materialï 1952.
24
Ibid. Taneyev staged Israel in Egypt with the students of the Moscow Conservatoire
on 7 December 1886. See Korabel’nikova, S. I. Taneyev v moskovskoy konservatorii, p. 126.
25
Cited in Gozenpud, Rikhard Vagner, p. 205.
 ‘One can learn a lot from Wagner, including how not to write operas’ 7

in a letter to Kruglikov curiously compared his overwhelming love for Wagner

with that for a woman.26
Der Ring in Moscow was a great occasion, and Taneyev even planned his
spring holiday in 1889 around the performances on 25, 27, 28, and 29 March.27 He
came back to Moscow in time for the event, after which he wrote to Tchaikovsky:

Wagner interested me in the highest degree, particularly in respect of harmony

and instrumentation. One can learn a lot from Wagner, including how not to
write operas. One day I want to speak with you about him in detail.28

There are no direct follow-up references to indicate whether or not such a

conversation indeed took place, but there is no reason to believe that it did not
occur during one of their frequent meetings. Taneyev was well known for his
love for playing with words, as described in the memoirs of his student Leonid
Sabaneyev;29 therefore, his comment that ‘one can learn a lot from Wagner,
including how not to write operas’, does not have to be taken at face value. Wagner
did not write operas: he wrote music dramas, and it is possible that Taneyev’s
reference stems from this premise. He named his Oresteia ‘a musical trilogy’,
which is clearly a nod towards Wagner’s Der Ring.30
Taneyev prepared for the performances of the cycle by studying the score of
Götterdämmerung, but managed to stay only for the first and second acts.31 The
last part of the cycle appeared to be his least favourite at the time, while he liked
Die Walküre so much that he went to see it twice. After seeing Der Ring almost in
its entirety, in a production that used authentic stage sets and original singers from
the Bayreuth Festival, Taneyev was inspired. He understood the need to change
his life circumstances in order to focus on what he wanted the most: composition.
He wrote to Tchaikovsky, asking for help in resigning the post of Director in
order to devote himself to composition and finishing Oresteia. Now the pinnacle
of his desires was ‘to attain real power and authority in music’ [приобрести в
области музыки настоящую власть и авторитет] and to ‘perfect himself in art’
[усовершенствованию себя в искусстве].32 It is obvious that the performances

26
Ibid., p. 206. Rimsky-Korsakov’s reaction to the St Petersburg performances of Der
Ring are explored in Chapter 2.
27
Pis’ma, p. 160.
28
‘Вагнер меня в высшей степени заинтересовал, в особенности в отношении
гармонии и инструментовки. Многому у него можно научиться, между прочим, и
тому, как не следует писать оперы. Kогда-нибудь я подробно поговорю с тобой о
нем.’ Ibid. Letter dated 11 April 1889, p. 158.
29
Sabaneyev, Vospominaniya.
30
Although Der Ring is frequently referred to as a tetralogy, Wagner created it as a
trilogy with an introduction.
31
Pis’ma. Letter to Tchaikovsky of 11 April 1889, p. 158.
32
Ibid., p. 159.
8 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

of Wagner’s Der Ring gave Taneyev an impetus to free his mind from ‘various
rubbish that has nothing to do with art’ [pазным вздором, до искусства не
относящимся] and start working on his opera seriously.33 Another event helped
strengthen Taneyev’s desire to resign – the death of his mother less than a month
before he saw and heard Der Ring. He became aware of the transience of life, and
decided to rid himself of the people in whom he had little or no interest and busy
himself with his strongest calling – composition.34
Later that year, Taneyev completed the Oresteia Overture, which has always
existed as a separate work independent of the opera.35 Because he composed it six
years before finishing Oresteia, he eventually decided that it no longer fitted the
opera, and replaced this traditional standard-size overture with a shorter prelude
along more Wagnerian lines. The prelude is built around one of the main themes
of the opera – the theme of Fate – and flows seamlessly into the first scene. It is
much shorter than any of Wagner’s own preludes to his music dramas, but its main
function is exactly as Wagner indicated – no more than a prologue. The Oresteia
Overture had therefore to be discarded because it contained all the most important
themes of the opera, and consequently disclosed to the listener much more than
Taneyev wanted to in an introduction.
After the première of the overture on 28 October 1889, in the second
symphonic gathering of the Moscow section of the Russian Musical Society,36 the
critic Semyon Kruglikov wrote:

Mr Taneyev the Mozartean and the author of Oresteia are two completely
different persons. I cannot say whether temporarily, or forever, but Mr Taneyev
has completely changed: he is in his new overture already not a Mozartean, he
is a Wagnerian.37

Kruglikov referred to Taneyev’s customary preference for Mozartean orchestration,

and in particular to the combination of trumpet in unison with timpani, which had
been forsaken in the overture in favour of four harps, bells, tam-tam, and piano
playing glissandi. Musically, Kruglikov noted similarities between ‘Lohengrin

33
Ibid.
34
Ibid.
35
The overture has been widely recorded, remaining one of Taneyev’s most popular
symphonic works. Notable recordings include Neeme Järvi on Chandos (B000000AMS,
October 1999) and Vladimir Ashkenazi on Ondine (B000053SLJ, February 2001).
36
Korabel’nikova, Tvorchestvo S. I. Taneyeva, p. 111. Also in S. Taneyev: Dnevniki
[Diaries], ed. Lyudmila Korabel’nikova (Moscow, 1985), vol. 3, p. 536. Hereafter referred
to as Dnevniki.
37
‘Мозартист г. Танеев и автор Орестеи – величины совершенно неизмеримые.
Г. Танеев, не могу сказать, на время или навсегда, но совершенно переродился: он в
новой cвоей увертюре уже не моцартист – он вагнерьянец.’ Bernandt, S. I. Taneyev,
p. 118.
 ‘One can learn a lot from Wagner, including how not to write operas’ 9

and his swans’.38 Another prominent critic, Herman Laroche, later put forth the
following opinion about the overture:

It is not possible to suspect the composer of Ioann Damaskin of weakness before

the magic of the Venusberg; if in the whole of Russia there cannot be found
a single Parsifal, then surely this one [Taneyev] is immune to the temptations
of Klingsor’s gardens. But when we discover that the most virtuous of us fell
under the spell, that in Oresteia rages the same Wotan, reigns the same legend,
that Aeschylus’s ‘good’ was glorified in the same colours in which luxuriated
criminal Gods of Edda […], when we discover that Sergey Ivanovich Taneyev is
a Wagnerite, we say: no, it must not happen!39

Thus, two of the most prominent Moscow critics summed up in their reviews the
general perception of Taneyev as the least likely candidate for a Wagnerite.40 By
the late 1880s Taneyev was well known in Russia as a master of strict counterpoint
and a serious scholar of early music, both areas considered dry and academic,
and seemingly incompatible with Wagner’s music of the future. Tchaikovsky
even bestowed on Taneyev the title ‘the Fire-Station Bach’41 because of Taneyev’s
obsession with counterpoint and the music of the early Netherlands composers.
The following year, 1890, Taneyev gave two piano recitals in Khar’kov,
including in his programme Wagner’s ‘Feuerzauber’, ‘Siegmunds Liebesgesang’,
and ‘Walhalla’ from Der Ring, all in Louis Brassin’s arrangements.42 The concerts
were a brilliant success, as witnessed by excellent press reviews, of which

38
Ibid., p. 119.
39
‘Уж кого-кого, а творца кантаты Иоанн Дамаскин нельзя было заподозрить в
слабости перед чарами Венериной горы; если во всей России не найдется ни одного
Парцифаля, то этот, казалось бы, застрахован от искушения клингзоровых цветочниц.
И когда мы узнаем, что самый добродетельный из нас захватил зелья никак не
меньше, что в Орестее бушует тот же Вотан, свирепствует та же легенда, что на
прославление Эсхиловского добра пошли те же краски, в которых поскошествовали
преступные боги Едды [...] Когда мы узнаем, говорю я, что Сергей Иванович Танеев
– вагнерист, мы говорим: нет, этого не должно быть!’ Herman Laroche (1845–1904), a
Russian music critic, and close friend of Tchaikovsky and Taneyev. Herman Laroche, ‘O
Val’kirii Rikharda Vagnera i vagnerizme’ [About Wagner’s Die Walküre and Wagnerism],
Yezhegodnik imperatorskikh teatrov [Yearbook of the Imperial theatres], sezon 1899–1900,
prilozheniye 1-ye [season 1899–1900, supplement 1], p. 68. Also quoted in Bernandt, S. I.
Taneyev, p. 121.
40
Alexander Siloti stated in his letter to Taneyev: ‘It is strange that your music also
reflects Wagner’s epoch.’ Pis’ma. Letter to Taneyev dated 1 September 1895, p. 514.
41
‘Бах из окрестностей Пожарного Депо’. Tchaikovsky’s nickname originated
from the fact that Taneyev lived near a fire station in Moscow. Ibid. Letter from Tchaikovsky
to Taneyev dated 1 August 1880, p. 57.
42
Louis Brassin, Aus Richard Wagner’s ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’ (Mainz, 1877).
10 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

Taneyev, usually so humble, informed Tchaikovsky with pleasure and pride.43 In

1891, Taneyev wrote to Tchaikovsky about his desire to travel to Vienna to the
musical exhibition; he said that it was not the exhibition itself that interested him,
but the possibility of hearing music that could not be heard in Russia. He wrote:
‘Mozart and Wagner interest me above all else.’44 For unknown reasons, however,
Taneyev did not travel to Vienna. On 29 June 1892 Taneyev wrote to Tchaikovsky
from his holiday in Pyatigorsk, saying that every day he composed his opera and
read the score of Siegfried.45 Thus, at least in the period of a few summer months,
his work on Oresteia went hand in hand with the study of Wagner’s music dramas.

Wagnerian Evenings

From 1894 Taneyev regularly held special gatherings at which he played Wagner’s
music dramas with his friends or students.46 Sabaneyev gave an account of how
these evenings began: one winter evening, Taneyev visited him with the score
of Götterdämmerung. He was interested in playing it through with Sabaneyev
in order to find out how Wagner ‘musically depicts apples, swords, and other
things’.47 Sabaneyev remembered that his teacher’s aim was to mock Wagner, but
the more they played, the more Taneyev’s expression changed from mockery to
seriousness, and even delight. As they finished, Taneyev looked crestfallen, saying
‘Yes, it is interesting!’48 He remarked as an afterthought: ‘But it is unbearably
complex. I am convinced that Wagner himself could not play from memory even
two pages of his own work. This is unnatural complexity!’49
After that play-through, Taneyev decided to hold a series of evenings to play
through Wagner’s music in order to acquaint himself, his students, and Moscow

43
Pis’ma. Letter dated 24 March 1890, p. 163.
44
Ibid. Letter dated 14 July 1891, p. 176.
45
Ibid. Letter dated 29 June 1892, p. 184.
46
In English, a brief account of Taneyev’s Wagnerian evenings can be found in
Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, ‘Wagner and Wagnerian Ideas in Russia’, in David C. Large
and William Weber (eds), Wagnerism in European Culture and Politics (Ithaca, 1984),
p. 201. Here, the author does not go beyond quoting Taneyev’s opening words ‘We will
study the villain thoroughly.’ While it was obviously not Rosenthal’s sole intention to study
Taneyev’s interest in Wagner, she joins the ranks of other writers who reflected the largely
accepted belief in Taneyev’s disdain for Wagner, which, although indeed present at the
outset, disappeared after Taneyev’s thorough study of the German ‘villain’.
47
‘Tам музыкой яблоки изображаются, мечи и еще разные вещи.’ Sabaneyev,
Vospominaniya, p. 132.
48
‘Да, это интересно!’ Ibid., p. 133.
49
‘Только это так нестерпимо сложно. Ведь я убежден, что сам Вагнер не мог бы
сыграть наизусть двух страниц своей вещи. Это противуестественная сложность!’
Ibid.
 ‘One can learn a lot from Wagner, including how not to write operas’ 11

musicians with Wagner’s music dramas. Sabaneyev wrote that among those
present were Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Konyus, Igumnov, Goldenweiser, and
Catoire50 (the only member of the group who was openly Wagnerian), as well as
Taneyev’s students.51 By that time, having played through Götterdämmerung with
Taneyev on one fateful evening, Sabaneyev was already a convinced Wagnerite,
but he did not yet admit it to anyone there, particularly to Taneyev. The first two
evenings were dedicated to Tristan und Isolde, at the first of which Rachmaninov
occupied a rocking chair in a corner of the room, holding the enormous score,
and occasionally issuing ‘gloomy remarks’ such as ‘still 1,500 more pages to go’
[oстается еще 1500 страниц].52 The first evening, as Sabaneyev recalled, did not
change Taneyev’s dislike of the music, and he remembered Taneyev’s definition
of Tristan as ‘foul chromaticism’ [пакостный хроматизм].53 The evening finished
with Taneyev retrieving a German book he had acquired containing caricatures of
Wagner and showing it to everyone present.
Die Meistersingers and Götterdämmerung followed Tristan. Sabaneyev wrote
that as a result of these evenings nothing really changed, and most Moscow
musicians who attended them did not accept Wagner any more enthusiastically.54
But there were changes for Taneyev – he began to find in Wagner beautiful passages
in which he recognised ‘music’ instead of ‘foul chromaticism’. Among his favourite
excerpts were ‘Wotan’s Farewell’ and the ‘Fire’ music, which Sabaneyev arranged
for two pianos and played for him with his brother, also Taneyev’s pupil. Taneyev
apparently listened with an expression of deep satisfaction and enjoyment, and as
they finished, exclaimed: ‘It is still wonderful music!’ [Это все-таки замечательная
музыка!]55 He claimed, however, that he did not understand Wagner, thinking his
music complex, the plots confusing, and the characters – Wotan, Siegfried, and
Tristan – boring.56 Taneyev began to note down his thoughts and ideas about Wagner,
and recorded conversations about the German composer he held with Tolstoy and
friends. In early February 1895 Taneyev recorded in his diary that he had examined
the score of Die Walküre,57 and later that month discussed Wagner’s harmony with
one of his students.58 By August of the same year he was playing through the piano
reduction of Götterdämmerung, as well as Wagner’s other music.59

50
The Russian composer Georgy Catoire (1861–1926) studied piano with Karl
Klindworth, from whom he inherited admiration for Wagner’s music, joining the Wagner
Society in Russia in 1879.
51
Sabaneyev, Vospominaniya, p. 133.
52
Ibid., p. 134.
53
Ibid.
54
Ibid.
55
Ibid., p. 135.
56
Ibid.
57
Dnevniki, vol. 1, p. 63.
58
Ibid., p. 71.
59
Ibid., p. 119.
12 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

Oresteia and Wagner

Oresteia Libretto

Act I, Agamemnon
After a 10-year wait, the Watchman finally sees the lights that signal
Agamemnon’s return from the Trojan War. Agamemnon’s wife
Clytemnestra announces to the people that their victorious king is
coming back. Clytemnestra’s lover (who is also Agamemnon’s cousin)
Aegisthus is in turmoil – he is afraid that Agamemnon will kill him
when he finds out that he has committed adultery with Clytemnestra.
Aegisthus recounts in his monologue how Atreus, Agamemnon’s
father, killed his own nephews and fed their roasted flesh to their father,
Thyestes. Aegisthus was the only surviving child of Thyestes, and thus
it is his duty to kill Agamemnon in order to avenge the deaths of his
siblings. Clytemnestra enters when he decides to flee and convinces
him to stay, saying that she has a plan to kill Agamemnon to avenge
the death of her daughter Iphigenia, whom Agamemnon sacrificed
to the goddess Artemis before going to war. When Agamemnon
returns, Clytemnestra executes her plan, and begins to rule Argos with
Aegisthus. She also kills Cassandra, Agamemnon’s concubine, whom
he brought back from Troy. Before her death, Cassandra prophesies
Orestes’ return and promises the people of Argos that he will avenge
Agamemnon’s death and expiate the House of Atreus from its sins.

Act II, The Libation Bearers

Clytemnestra wakes up in her bedroom from a terrifying dream.
Agamemnon’s phantom appears to her and prophesies her imminent
death at the hand of Orestes. Orestes returns and meets his sister Electra
at Agamemnon’s grave, telling her that he was ordered by Apollo to
avenge the death of their father. Orestes kills both Clytemnestra and
Aegisthus, but his mother’s Furies, the spirits of retribution, begin to
pursue him in punishment.

Act III, Eumenides

Exhausted by the Furies’ pursuit, Orestes attempts suicide, but the
Furies prevent it in order to increase his suffering. He decides to go
to Apollo’s temple in Delphi and ask the god for protection. Apollo
drives the Furies away, and sends Orestes to Athens, where Athena
summons a court of the Areopagus to decide Orestes’ fate. The court’s
votes divide equally for and against Orestes, and the goddess casts her
vote in his favour. Orestes is freed from his sin through his suffering
and repentance, and Athena bequeaths a new law to the Athenians –
brotherly love and compassion.
 ‘One can learn a lot from Wagner, including how not to write operas’ 13

Taneyev started to work seriously on Oresteia in 1882, the year Wagner wrote his
last music drama, Parsifal.60 Both works are based around the idea of retribution
and repentance. Oresteia is a story of family feud, adultery, murder – even
inadvertent cannibalism – whose hero Orestes confronts his destiny to kill his own
mother in order to avenge his father’s death. Oresteia took Taneyev more than
a decade to write, during which time in the Russian operatic repertory appeared
Borodin’s Knyaz’ Igor’ [Prince Igor]; Tchaikovsky’s Pikovaya dama [Queen of
Spades], Mazepa [Mazeppa], Charodeyka [Enchantress], and Iolanta; Rimsky-
Korsakov’s Mlada, Snegurochka [Snow Maiden], and Noch’ pered Rozhdestvom
[Christmas Eve]; and Musorgsky’s Khovanshchina and Boris Godunov in
Rimsky-Korsakov’s editions. The majority of these operas took their inspiration
from Pushkin’s dramas or Russian fairy-tales, and all but one (Iolanta) deal with
Russian people or themes. Oresteia, of course, appeared completely in dissonance
with the rest of the operas written by Taneyev’s contemporaries.
Oresteia shares a number of obvious similarities with Wagner’s Ring: owing to
the nature of their texts, the characters inform the audience of past events in their
monologues. The idea of wanderers is common to both, as both Wotan and Orestes
visit their families in disguise. In Die Walküre, semi-goddess and semi-human
Brünnhilde foretells the arrival of a hero, Siegfried, whose leitmotif appears for the
first time in her vocal part. Taneyev’s Cassandra, close to god-like status because
she can see the future, also predicts a hero’s arrival – Orestes – whose leitmotif
also appears for the first time in her vocal part. In form, Oresteia is also mostly
through-composed, and any solo or separate numbers do not break the continuity
of the action. This is, of course, also a result of the nature of the ancient text on
which Oresteia’s libretto is based.

Subject and Form

Wagner used ancient Scandinavian legends for the majority of his operas – Der
Ring, Lohengrin, Der fliegende Holländer, and Parsifal. In Wagner’s operas gods
and mortals exist side by side, and often interact. For his opera, Taneyev chose an
ancient Greek tragedy, written by Aeschylus in 525–c.456 BC. An ancient text,
accessible gods, and mortals with little or no morals are the most overt similarities
between Taneyev’s Oresteia and Wagner’s music dramas. It is likely that Taneyev
chose this subject simply because he was passionate about early Greek literature,
to which he was exposed from early years, but his curiosity in Wagner may have
reignited that passion at a crucial moment of his career.

60
In my doctoral thesis, I argue that Taneyev actually conceived his opera in 1878,
starting to compose it in 1882, but later discarding much of what he has written, and
beginning the serious work only in 1887. See Anastasia Belina, ‘A Critical Re-Evaluation
of Taneyev’s Oresteia’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Leeds, 2009).
14 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

Oresteia is written in three acts and eight tableaux. The tableaux are divided
into separate scenes, but despite this division, the opera gives the impression
of being through-composed; even separate arias and ensembles are masterfully
interwoven into the music, and do not break the continuity of the action. Act I
is the least through-composed, primarily because the action for the whole of the
opera is laid out, with explanations of past events, while Acts II and III, where
the most important action occurs, are almost completely through-composed. The
opera begins with a short prelude, which seamlessly flows into the first scene
along the lines of a Wagnerian music drama.

Anticipation and Reminiscence Motifs

Although Taneyev employed leitmotifs in the opera, their treatment is not as

systematic as Wagner’s: he does not identify everything musically, from objects to
ideas. Instead, he chooses to concentrate on depicting the emotional states of his
characters and the most important ideas of the opera. What Taneyev does take from
Wagner, however, is the treatment of leitmotif not simply as a tool for anticipation
and reminiscence, but also as a building block of the musical material of the opera.
While studying Wagner’s music dramas during the composition of his opera,
Taneyev noted that he was most interested in Wagnerian harmony and orchestration
– two topics that require a separate extensive study beyond the scope of this
chapter.61 Like Wagner, Taneyev never referred to his leitmotifs as such; unlike
Wagner, however, he refrained from leaving any extended written discussion of
the use of this technique.
Wagner’s reminiscence motifs are continually recurring and developing, both
harmonically and thematically, and serve as foundations for musical structure. Wagner
lamented that too often leitmotifs in his music dramas were viewed as devices of
musical illustration and effect rather than elements of musical structure.62 Wagner’s
motifs, as outlined in his Oper und Drama, have two defining characteristics: they
appear as motifs either of anticipation or reminiscence.63 As will be seen further in
this chapter, Taneyev shared similar views on the use of his musical motifs.
Barry Millington defines anticipation motifs as those that refer ‘to musico-
dramatic ideas presented by the orchestra but not yet heard in conjunction with the
relevant text’.64 As for reminiscence motifs, Millington further explains:

61
Wagnerian influences can be seen in Taneyev’s similar approach to the use of
progressive tonality in Oresteia, whose every act begins and ends in a different key. Within
individual scenes, which also rarely begin and end in the same key, Taneyev changed tonal
centres freely, as heard, for example, in Cassandra’s scene in Act I.
62
Arnold Whittall, ‘Leitmotif’, Grove Music Online [accessed 20 March 2009].
63
Richard Wagner, Opera and Drama, trans. E. Evans (London, 1913), vol. 1, pp.
378–9.
64
Barry Millington, The New Grove Guide to Wagner and his Operas (Oxford, 2006),
p. 171.
 ‘One can learn a lot from Wagner, including how not to write operas’ 15

In their purest form [reminiscence motifs] were heard for the first time as a
conjunction of musical and textual reference. Later recurrences would serve
to recall that original conjunction. Such motifs were not uncommon in later
eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century operatic practice, but Wagner was the
first to codify the procedure.65

The following section will show that Taneyev also used both kinds of motifs in
Oresteia. Although his treatment of leading motifs is less extensive and systematic
than Wagner’s, it is nevertheless very prominent. Most importantly, the motifs in
Oresteia are the building blocks of organic musical development. As a teacher of
musical forms, Taneyev devoted a great deal of attention to definition of a motif
and its role in the development of large-scale compositions.66 He viewed a motif
as a ‘small musical and thematic cell, containing, as a rule, one strong beat’.67 This
kind of cell was to him one of the most important constituents of musical structure.
Igor Glebov [pseudonym of Boris Asafiev] counted 46 reminiscence motifs
in Taneyev’s opera, but his count must be challenged. He included motifs that
occur only once, giving them names and functions; but because they do not recur
in the music they cannot be associated with any kind of recollection of ideas that
they supposedly convey.68 In Oresteia there are only seven true leading motifs
(both reminiscence and anticipation): the Wrongdoing, the Killed Children, the
two motifs of the Furies, and the motifs of Cassandra, Orestes, and Apollo. Some
are confined to one scene only; others occur a limited number of times throughout
the opera but are strongly associated with a character they represent; and some are
heard throughout Oresteia.
The principle of using a limited number of themes or melodic cells to
create symphonic, instrumental, and vocal works was a practice that developed
in Taneyev’s compositional practice as early as 1873.69 Using one motif as a

65
Ibid., p. 174.
66
Fyodor Arzamanov, S. I. Taneyev: prepodavatel’ kursa muzïkal’nïkh form [S. I.
Taneyev: teacher of a course in musical form] (Moscow, 1984), p. 19.
67
‘Hаименьшая музыкально-тематическая ячейка, обладающая (как правило)
одной метрически сильной долей.’ Ibid.
68
Igor’ Glebov, ‘Oresteia: muzïkal’naya trilogiya Taneyeva’ [Oresteia: the musical
trilogy by Taneyev], Muzïka (1915), 233 (492–503); 235 (539–48); 236 (555–72); 237
(579–87). The following motifs appear only once, defined by Glebov as: Agamemnon’s
power (Glebov, p. 540); Aegisthus’ anxiety about his power (p. 546); Clytemnestra’s
despair and terror (p. 556), to give but a few examples.
69
Yury Gen-Ir presented a thorough study of Taneyev’s choral compositions,
where this principle often plays a prominent role, in Chertï stilya khorov S. I. Taneyeva
[Stylistic features of Taneyev’s choruses] (Petrozavodsk, 1991). Taneyev’s Overture in D
minor (1875), First Symphony (1873–74), and String Quartet in D minor (1874–76) are
further examples where Taneyev demonstrated how a small number of themes were used
to create large-scale structures and develop musical material. For further information, see
Korabel’nikova, Tvorchestvo S. I. Taneyeva, pp. 22–37.
16 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

building block, Taneyev created other motifs (named above) that helped develop
the symphonic and melodic structure of Oresteia. This relates the application of
motifs in Oresteia to the Wagnerian interpretation of motifs as ‘fertilising seeds’70
that give birth to other motifs, contributing to the richness of musical material and
texture. Taneyev was interested in the opportunities afforded by motif-building
blocks, rather than in their use as purely descriptive and expressive musical
interludes. Although Taneyev’s system of motifs in Oresteia exists on a smaller
scale than that observed in Wagner’s musical dramas, his understanding and
interpretation of motifs was thus very similar.
In Oresteia, Taneyev established an observable division of dramatic ideas and
musical dualities: contrasting motifs of dark and light, negative and positive, and
good and evil elements were used to develop the musical and dramatic ideas of the
opera. The murders that took place in the House of Atreus are an ‘evil’ that can only
be overcome by the ‘good’ of Apollo’s power, Orestes’ repentance and suffering, and
Athena’s forgiveness. The three ‘dark’ motifs – the Wrongdoing, Killed Children,
and the Furies – are the opposite of the ‘light’, positive motif of Apollo, who
symbolises the victory of good over evil that finally lifts the curse of the House of
Atreus, banishes the Furies from his temple, and protects Orestes from their pursuit.
By using the principal themes in the opera as anticipation and reminiscence
motifs, Taneyev guides his audience towards a greater engagement with the
drama. The Wrongdoing motif is the most important of the series of three ‘dark’
motifs not only because of its symbolic meaning, but also because it gives birth
to the other two motifs of the group. After the gloomy and ominous opening of
the prelude the next appearance of the Wrongdoing motif creates an association
with the dark, sinister elements of the story. Taneyev was careful with the use of
the Wrongdoing motif by employing it in its pure version only a limited number
of times, in the pivotal moments of the drama – after the prelude it appears only
at the time of Clytemnestra’s death in Act II and in the scene of Orestes and the
Furies in Act III. But by constructing the greater part of the musical fabric of the
opera from the ‘seed’ of the Wrongdoing motif, Taneyev maintained the sense
of a gloomy and tragic atmosphere full of pessimistic foreboding. The symbolic
musical embodiment of the curse at the House of Atreus disappears only at the end
of the drama with Apollo and Athena’s intervention.

The Wrongdoing Motif

Taneyev’s opera opens with a dark orchestral prelude, from the very beginning
setting the gloomy tone for Act I. The prelude itself opens with a motif, which Glebov
believed referred to the crimes in the story, both those that had already happened and
therefore could not be undone, and those that were imminent.71 I redefine the motif

70
Wagner discussed the function of a musical motif as ‘fructifying seed’ in his Opera
and Drama, vol. 2, p. 668.
71
Glebov, ‘Oresteia’, p. 497.
 ‘One can learn a lot from Wagner, including how not to write operas’ 17

here as a representation of Wrongdoing more generally because the motif is clearly

associated with actions that breach universal laws and moral boundaries. After its
initial appearance in the prelude, the Wrongdoing motif is heard throughout the
work in key moments: when people realise that Cassandra could see the past crimes
in the House of Atreus (scored for bassoons and tubas); before Clytemnestra’s
speech about Agamemnon’s murder (clarinets, oboes, bassoons, horns, and tubas)
in Act I; in the vocal line of Orestes as he greets the unsuspecting Clytemnestra and
Aegisthus in Act II; and in the symphonic Entr’acte to the Eumenides that paints a
scene of terror and moral torment endured by Orestes in Act III.
Similar to Wagner’s music dramas, where the tonal centres are often the interval
of a third apart,72 the key centres in Taneyev’s opera are frequently found to be
on major or minor third axes around D.73 Some of the most important events in
the opera occur in the keys of D and those a minor or major third away from it.74
The first evidence of third-relations is found in the opening of the prelude, and the
Wrongdoing motif. The ending of the first segment of the motif is in D minor (bar 2),
while the ending of the second is in B@ major (bar 5), as seen in Example 1.1.

Example 1.1 Taneyev, Oresteia, Prelude, opening: ‘Wrongdoing’ motif

72
The prelude to Parsifal is a good example of such tonal relationships, where the
opening theme relates to both C minor and A@ major.
73
This is true not only of Wagner and Taneyev, of course, but also of other nineteenth-
century composers, and the emphasis on chords and keys a third apart was often made
in order to open up broader tonal possibilities than dominant and subdominant relations
could provide. For a further discussion see Arnold Whittall, ‘The Music’, in Lucy Beckett,
Richard Wagner: Parsifal (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 61–86.
74
D minor is present in the introduction; Cassandra’s Arioso and parts of her scene;
the scene where the slave informs Clytemnestra about Aegisthus’ death; Clytemnestra’s
attempts to dissuade Orestes from killing her; and the Entr’acte to the scene of Orestes and
the Furies, which is a culmination of all dark elements in the opera.
B@ major is found in the parts of scene 4 in which Aegisthus and Clytemnestra prepare
to exact revenge on Agamemnon (Act I, scene 4), Agamemnon’s death (Act I, scene 8), and
the Quartet of Orestes, Clytemnestra, Aegisthus, and Electra (Act II, scene 19). B@ minor
is the key of Agamemnon’s comeback as a phantom (Act II, scene 12), and B minor is
present in Cassandra’s scene (Act I, scene 8) and the Duet of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus
(Act I, scene 4). F minor is the key in which Clytemnestra sends Agamemnon to his death
(Act I, scene 7), when she comes out to the people and recounts how she killed him (Act I,
scene 9); the scene of Clytemnestra, Electra, and chorus (Act II, scene 13); and the scene of
Orestes’ and Electra’s reunion (Act II, scene 17).
18 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

The descending minor second and minor third (F–E–C#, bar 1) become a building
block for much of the opera’s musical material, also appearing in a slightly
changed intervallic form in the second half of the motif: descending major
second and minor third (D–C–A, bar 4). Variations on these two cells appear
throughout Oresteia when references to sin and evil are made, and Taneyev used
the cells as a ‘fertilising seed’ out of which musical material organically grew
and developed. This development reaches its apex in the symphonic Entr’acte
to the Eumenides, where it becomes the main source of thematic material. By
taking the Wrongdoing motif as a whole, or by using its segments, Taneyev
was able not only to keep it in the minds of his listeners and utilise its emotive
qualities, but also to explore its possibilities as a generator of melodic richness
in the opera.
Taneyev used the ‘fertilising seed’ of the Wrongdoing motif not only in its
recognisable form, but also in ‘disguised’ version. One such example occurs in the
short orchestral introduction to the scene of Agamemnon and the people of Argos.
When Agamemnon arrives and greets his home again, his words are presaged
by four ascending rhythmical semi-quaver figures, which are an inversion of the
Wrongdoing motif (Example 1.2).

Example 1.2 Taneyev, Oresteia (Act I, scene 6), entry of Agamemnon

Glebov believed that this short motif represented the King’s power,75 but
closer inspection shows that it is the King’s doom that is expressed here with
more certainty. The inverted motif, with its gloomy associations, points to
Agamemnon’s bad luck; here, Taneyev makes a subliminal reference to the dark
outcome of Agamemnon’s arrival. Another use of a disguised Wrongdoing motif is
in the scene where Clytemnestra greets a wanderer who tells her that he is a tired
traveller. Just as the wanderer’s clothes hide the real Orestes, his vocal line hides
the Wrongdoing motif. The orchestra plays part of the motif, and Orestes repeats
it immediately in his seemingly innocuous words ‘I grew tired along the way, and
am looking for rest. I have no strength to walk on; my body wants respite’ on the
notes B@–A–F (bars 1–2) and E@–D–B@ (bar 4) in Example 1.3.

75
Glebov, ‘Oresteia’, p. 540.
 ‘One can learn a lot from Wagner, including how not to write operas’ 19

Example 1.3 Taneyev, Oresteia (Act II, scene 19), Orestes as a wanderer

As the two examples above show, Taneyev employed the main cell of the
Wrongdoing motif to inform Agamemnon and Clytemnestra of their impending
deaths, but neither recognises its meaning.76 Wagner (and other operatic
composers) often used this kind of dramatic effect because it enabled him to
increase the sense of drama by involving audiences in the emotional world of
the stage characters using leitmotifs that have been defined within the dramatic
context of the opera.

After Oresteia

The preparations for Oresteia’s première in 1895 took up the whole year, and
Taneyev had little time for any other work. After the première, he began revising
Oresteia for publication with Belyaev’s publishing house in Leipzig, and his
diaries at the time show that work on the revision of the opera and study of
Wagner went side by side. In 1896 Taneyev played Götterdämmerung with
his students, went to see Siegfried with Tolstoy and his family, and discussed
Wagner’s music with the novelist.77 On one occasion he even came to Wagner’s
defence when Tolstoy launched a verbal attack on the composer, accusing him
of making art inaccessible for the masses – something that Tolstoy vehemently
opposed – and pronouncing him ‘mad’.78 Tolstoy viewed Wagner as an elitist
artist because the majority of the population were not able to understand his
music and ideas. Wagner occupied so much of Tolstoy’s mind that the writer
even included a conversation about the German composer between two
characters in his novel Anna Karenina, one of whom, Levin, must have been

76
Strauss used the same method to tell his Clytemnestra that she will soon die, and
similarly, she did not recognise, or chose to ignore, the warning signs. Richard Strauss,
Elektra (Berlin, 1916), pp. 118–20, rehearsal number 181, ‘Ich habe keine guten Nacht.’ The
woodwind section enters with a funeral-like, mournful, and dark chordal progression. Like
Taneyev’s Clytemnestra, her counterpart in Strauss’ opera also suffers from sleeplessness
and guilt.
77
Dnevniki, vol. 1, pp. 148, 152, 154.
78
Ibid., p. 162.
20 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

speaking for Tolstoy himself. Levin expressed belief that Wagner’s mistake was
to allow music to cross into foreign realms – poetry and art. In his What is
Art? Tolstoy also expressed his thoughts on Wagner’s music. There, he rather
arrogantly recounted his late arrival for the performance of the second drama in
Der Ring, having been told that the prelude to it was ‘of slight importance’,79
and completely refused any attempt at evaluating Wagner objectively. He did,
however, describe the performances of Der Ring in 1889, which, if his words
are to be believed, were far from competently staged. If it is indeed so, then it
is no surprise that such artists as Tolstoy and, to some extent, Taneyev, found it
difficult to relate to the performances.
In the next two years (1896–97) Taneyev wrote down on several occasions that
he played Die Meistersingers for his guests,80 and attended a performance of Tristan
and Isolde, which he did not enjoy.81 In 1899, Taneyev attended many concerts
where he heard much of Wagner’s music.82 In 1903, Taneyev was included in a
committee that was sent to the unveiling of Wagner’s statue in Berlin.83 Spending
three weeks there, he went to the opera to see Die Meistersingers84 and Lohengrin
(twice),85 and intended to travel to Leipzig to hear Die Walküre, conducted by
Arthur Nikisch.86
Sabaneyev recalled that in 1906–07, during one of his visits to Taneyev, he
found his former teacher studying the score of Parsifal. When asked if he had
finally ‘got the bug’, Taneyev replied simply and with satisfaction: ‘as it happens,
[this is] excellent music. It is written so well and so thoroughly, without any dirt.’87
Parsifal must have proved to be an interesting case, for Taneyev kept studying it
well into 1908.88
The amount of time Taneyev spent on studying Wagner came second only to
his study of counterpoint and early music. Wagner’s music did not simply exert
stylistic influence on Taneyev’s Oresteia: it was the impetus that he needed to
finish it. Oresteia is in many ways a Wagnerian opera, and while Taneyev did not
use and develop Wagner’s devices to the same extent, their influences are obvious
throughout the whole work.

79
Leo Tolstoy, What is Art? and Essays and Art by Leo Tolstoy, trans. Aylmer Maude
(London, 1969), p. 207.
80
Dnevniki, vol. 1, p. 188.
81
Ibid., p. 199.
82
Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 28, 47, 48, 92.
83
Ibid., vol. 3, entries on pp. 65–73.
84
Ibid., p. 71.
85
Ibid., pp. 72 and 73.
86
Ibid., p. 67.
87
‘Oказывается, отличная музыка. И как хорошо сделана, все так тщательно,
никакой грязи.’ Sabaneyev, Vospominaniya, p. 138.
88
Taneyev last mentions Parsifal in his diaries in April 1907, writing that he is
‘reading the score’ [читаю партитуру]. Dnevniki, vol. 3, p. 311.
 ‘One can learn a lot from Wagner, including how not to write operas’ 21

Although he did not admit to it for a long time to his friends and colleagues,
Wagner fascinated Taneyev, who was often secretive about his works and thoughts.
He once wrote to his close friend and colleague Anton Arensky (1861–1906):

I am always embarrassed to talk about my impressions: even in the theatre I

do not like to sit with my acquaintances because I cannot bear to show that
something has affected or created a strong impression on me.89

This comment may be indicative of the fact that Taneyev showed his interest in
Wagner much less than a more extrovert person would have done, and makes
his statement in the letter to Tchaikovsky where he asked for Tchaikovsky’s help
with his resignation from the post of Director of the Moscow Conservatoire in
order to complete his opera Oresteia all the more significant.90 In 1894, Taneyev
began to host a regular series of ‘Wagner evenings’, at which he played and
discussed Wagner’s works with his students, friends, and colleagues, and which
are well documented in Sabaneyev’s aforementioned memoirs.
Sabaneyev’s references to Taneyev’s hatred of Wagner in the second half of
the 1890s can be questioned on the basis of the previously examined evidence. It
is possible that Sabaneyev confused the dates, or that he somewhat exaggerated
his teacher’s attitude to Wagner at the time, or even that his comments actually
reflect his own opinions more than they do Taneyev’s. In his letters and diaries
from the period, Taneyev never mentioned Wagner in absolutely negative light;
on the contrary, they demonstrate that Taneyev was already well on the way to
admiring the German composer. Thus, Sabaneyev’s account of Taneyev’s dislike
of Wagner falls apart when Taneyev’s own writings are examined. Although
the critic colourfully illustrated his stories of Taneyev’s dislike of Wagner with
Taneyev’s own eloquent expressions, he nevertheless gave examples of his
teacher’s admiration of Wagner’s later works.
Throughout his life, Taneyev collected Wagner’s published works. His music
library included, apart from music scores, Wagner’s prose works Beethoven,
Oper und Drama, and Thematischer Leitfaden durch die Music des Parsifal.
Oper und Drama, translated into Russian in 1906, contains many pencil marks
made by Taneyev in the process of reading and studying it, and the chapter on the
relationship of poet and composer was particularly well scrutinised. Among 17
books about Wagner and his music owned by Taneyev, only two are in Russian and
the remainder are in German – such as a work about Wagner and Liszt,91 studies of

89
‘Я всегда стесняюсь высказывать свои впечатления: даже в театре не люблю,
чтобы около меня сидели знакомые, ибо терпеть не могу выказывать, что я чем-
нибудь взволнован или что-нибудь произвело на меня сильное впечатление.’ Materialï
1952. Letter to Arensky dated 8 October 1886.
90
Pis’ma, p. 158. Letter to Tchaikovsky dated 11 April 1889.
91
Richard Wagner, Briefwechsel zwischen Wagner und Liszt [Correspondence
between Wagner and Liszt] (Leipzig, 1887).
22 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

Wagner’s harmony by Bussler,92 studies of Rienzi and Parsifal,93 Der Ring,94 and
Tristan and Isolde.95 In Russian, Taneyev possessed an article on Wagner and his
artistic reform,96 and a guide to Wagner’s all-music dramas.97 Many of these items
also contain marginal notes made by Taneyev while reading and studying.
Taneyev also collected the scores of Wagner’s music dramas, and his library
collection includes two volumes of Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, two editions of Die
Walküre, Siegfried, Parsifal, and Kaiser-Marsch. Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Die
Walküre, and Parsifal all bear Taneyev’s hand-written marginalia, made while
studying these scores. Although some of the books and scores acquired by Taneyev
are dated after Oresteia, he would also have had full access to Tchaikovsky’s
library from the very beginning of their friendship. Tchaikovsky’s library contains
the scores of Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung, all
arranged for piano by Klindworth in 1861, 1865, 1871, and 1875 respectively.
There is also a score of Lohengrin and a piano arrangement of Parsifal by Joseph
Rubinstein.
Taneyev’s interest in Wagner is one of the least addressed aspects of the Russian
composer’s biography, and this chapter has attempted to provide some exploration
of this aspect of his music and life in depth. Taneyev was interested in Wagner’s
musical ideas and assimilated them to some extent in his own work. His Oresteia
shows not only influences that are immediately obvious, such as Fire Music in the
opening scene, but also reach far deeper, into a more profound understanding of
the leitmotif technique. Taneyev’s reception of Wagner offers a fuller perspective
into how Wagner influenced Russian music; and in the light of the generally held
view that Taneyev was the unlikeliest of Wagnerians, Wagner’s impact on Russian
music emerges as even greater than previously suspected.

92
L. Bussler, Partitur-Studium. Modulation der klassischen Meister: an zahlreichen
Beispielen von Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Wagner u. A. (Berlin, 1882).
93
Judith Gautier, Richard Wagner und seine Dichtung von Rienzi bis zu Parsifal
(Bonn, 1893).
94
Karl Köstlin, Richard Wagner’s Tondrama. Der Ring des Nibelungen: Seine Idee
Handlung und musikalische Komposition (Tübingen, 1877).
95
Richard Wagner, Tristan und Isolde. Jeder Nachdruck, auch von seiten der Bühnen
für ihre Aufführungen, ist verboten: Neue durchges. Bühnenausg. (Leipzig, 1908).
96
K. Eiges, ‘Rikhard Vagner i yego hudozhestvennoye reformatorstvo’ [Richard
Wagner and his artistic reforms], Russkaya mïsl’ [Russian thought], 6 (1913), pp. 56–68.
97
Ivan Lipayev, Vagneriana: sputnik oper i muzïkalnykh dram R. Vagnera
[Wagneriana: companion to Wagner’s operas and music dramas] (Moscow, 1904).
 Chapter 2
‘The end of opera itself’: Rimsky-Korsakov
and Wagner
Stephen Muir

In a letter of June 1901, with reference to Wagner’s music drama Siegfried,

Nikolay Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908) made a striking comment to
his son Andrey: ‘I often wonder if he (Wagner) has set in motion the end of opera
itself, the fate of which is corrupted forever.’1 The doyen of Russian composers,
internationally renowned, and the creator of (up to that point) twelve operas
himself, Rimsky-Korsakov was seemingly well placed to pass judgement in this
manner. But the comment came after a long period of reflection during which
Rimsky-Korsakov’s assessment had not always remained the same, wavering
from cynicism through admiration, and back to the scepticism expressed to his
closest family members around the turn of the century. What, then, caused him to
view Wagner as such a threat to the future of opera?
In this chapter I set out Rimsky-Korsakov’s evolving attitudes toward the
German composer in order to seek possible answers as to why, like so many others,
he found Wagner so frustrating – both musically stimulating and ideologically
challenging at the same time. The longest-lived of all the so-called Nationalist
composers except Balakirev, and certainly the most obviously successful member
of that group by the twentieth century, Rimsky-Korsakov’s changing perspectives
on Wagner can be seen almost as a microcosm of many nineteenth-century Russian
composers’ musical responses, from the early days of Balakirev’s Moguchaya
kuchka to the nascent Symbolist movement at the dawn of the new century. I
therefore consider the musical and ideological relationship between the two
composers, drawing upon the limited body of secondary literature on the subject,
combined with information from the relevant primary sources briefly described
below. The composer’s attitudes towards other composers in general, both Russian
and non-Russian, are first examined in order to provide a broader context, after
which his evolving opinions on Wagner more specifically are addressed, with
examples from some of his works providing a focus. As will be seen, Rimsky-
Korsakov’s outlook on Wagner underwent a radical evolution over the course of

1
‘Часто приходит в голову, не положено ли им (Вагнер) настоящее начало
конца оперной музыке, судьба которой испорчена навсегда.’ ‘Iz neopublikovannïkh
dokumentov pis’ma k sïnu Andreyu’ [From the unpublished letters to his son Andrey]
Sovetskaya muzïka [Soviet music] 6 (1958), p. 68.
24 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

his lifetime, and to a great extent mirrors the conflicting emotions, concerns and
enthusiasms shared by many of his Russian contemporaries.

Primary Sources

Publication of Rimsky-Korsakov’s letters started in earnest in 1909, in the special

edition of Russkaya muzïkal’naya gazeta [Russian musical gazette] marking the first
anniversary of his death, and continues to the present day. Some of the most recent
contributions feature excerpts from the composer’s correspondence with his family,2
and with his close friends Vasily Vasil’yevich Yastrebtsev and Vladimir Ivanovich
Bel’sky.3 Other notable publications include the edition of the periodical Sovetskaya
muzïka [Soviet music] marking the fiftieth anniversary of Rimsky-Korsakov’s death
(1958), as well as many other issues of this and other journals. Of particular interest
is the voluminous correspondence between Rimsky-Korsakov and his librettist,
Bel’sky, published initially in Sovetskaya muzïka in 1976, and later in the collection
cited above. Rimsky-Korsakov was particularly open and candid with this very close
friend (often ending in fierce arguments by letter), and the result at times is a very
clear idea of what the composer thought about the music of others.
Also of significance for our purposes is a series of articles on the aesthetics
and principles of music penned by Rimsky-Korsakov in the early 1890s, but
not published until the 1930s, and then later collected together in volume two
(1963) of Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy: Literaturnïye proizvedeniya i perepiska
[Complete collected works: literary works and correspondence]. One of these
essays concerns Wagner specifically – ‘Vagner: Sovokupnoye proizvedeniye
dvukh iskusstv, ili muzykal’naya drama’ [Wagner: the joint work of two arts, or
music drama], dated 18–24 August 1892. Here Rimsky-Korsakov concludes that
Wagner’s main contribution was as a composer of descriptive, graphic music,
at the same time chastising him for excesses of length and complexity, and an
unwillingness to use the chorus as the voice of the masses.4

2
N. I. Metelitsï, N. P. Golovko, V. S. Fialkovskiy, N. V. Kostenko (eds), N. A. Rimskiy-
Korsakov: Iz semeynoy perepiski [N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov: from his family correspondence]
(St. Petersburg, 2008). The collection is based upon an earlier book, T. V. Rimskaya-Korsakova,
Detstvo i yunost’ N. A. Rimskogo-Korsakova: iz semeynoy perepiski [The childhood and youth
of N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov: from his family correspondence] (St. Petersburg, 1995).
3
Lyudmila Grigor’evna Barsova (ed.), N. A. Rimskiy-Korsakov: Perepiska s V.
V. Yastrebtsevïm i V. I. Bel’skim [N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov: correspondence with V. V.
Yastrebtsev and V. I. Bel’sky] (St. Petersburg, 2004). As yet, there has been no attempt to
publish translations of any of these sets of letters.
4
N. A. Rimskiy-Korsakov, ‘Vagner: Sovokupnoye proizvedeniye dvukh iskusstv,
ili muzykal’naya drama’ [Wagner: the joint work of two arts, or music drama], Polnoye
sobraniye sochineniy: Literaturnïye proizvedeniya i perepiska [Complete collected works:
literary works and correspondence], vol. 2 (Moscow, 1963), pp. 47–60.
 ‘The end of opera itself’ 25

The other main primary sources of general information for the Rimsky-
Korsakov scholar concerning the composer’s own thoughts and impressions are
his autobiography,5 and the personal reminiscences of Yastrebtsev, written down
over a period of some twenty-two years.6 Both require careful treatment. In the
first case, Rimsky-Korsakov was still writing much of his autobiography in 1906,
more than twenty years after many of the events and impressions he describes.
The book contains many factual and chronological errors, and it is often obvious
that the passing of time clouded Rimsky-Korsakov’s memory. His comments on
Balakirev, for example, often need to be treated with some suspicion; many are
frank almost to the point of unfairness. However, this is still a valuable resource,
and numerous references to it will be made in this chapter. Similarly, Rimsky-
Korsakov was well aware of Yastrebtsev’s Boswell-like project (and, indeed,
frequently asked to inspect it) and this may have, on occasions, prevented the
composer from expressing himself fully. Yastrebtsev recorded his conversations
and experiences with Rimsky-Korsakov obsessively, and there is little to suggest
that he distorted facts or misrepresented the composer in any significant way.
But as will be seen, Rimsky-Korsakov’s opinions as found in his letters were
often somewhat more outspoken than those expressed in these two books.

Early and Developing Views on Music

Far from living in any kind of cultural vacuum, Rimsky-Korsakov was

surrounded by a wide variety of musics throughout his life. As the composer
himself wrote, ‘Balakirev’s circle corresponded to the period of storm and stress
in the evolution of Russian music’;7 a young composer growing up in such an
atmosphere could not help but be influenced by the various composers around
him. By examining this early period of musical apprenticeship, and tracing the
evolution of his opinions over the subsequent years, it is possible to place in a
broader context his emerging and developing attitude towards Wagner.

5
N. A. Rimskiy-Korsakov, Letopis’ moyey muzïkal’noy zhizni (Moscow, 1955);
translated in N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, My Musical Life, ed. Carl van Vechten, trans.
Judah A. Joffe (London and Boston, 1923). For the most part, quotations from Rimsky-
Korsakov’s Letopis’ are derived from My Musical Life, and references take the
following form: Letopis’, p. xxx; My Musical Life, p. xxx. However, there are occasional
difficulties with the translations in My Musical Life; where I have provided my own
translation, or corrected Joffe’s, this is made clear in the text with square brackets, or in
relevant footnote references as appropriate. All other translations from Russian sources
are my own.
6
Vasiliy Vasil’yevich Yastrebtsev, Reminiscences of Rimsky-Korsakov, ed. and trans.
F. Jonas (New York, 1985).
7
‘Кружок Балакирева соответствовал периоду бури и натиска в развитии
русской музыки,’ Letopis’, p. 163; My Musical Life, p. 286.
26 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

Rimsky-Korsakov’s early views were inextricably linked to those of Balakirev

and his circle. Rimsky-Korsakov is quite explicit in his autobiography as to what
these, and by implication his own, beliefs were:

The tastes of the circle leaned towards Glinka, Schumann, and Beethoven’s last
quartets. Eight symphonies of Beethoven found comparatively little favour with
the circle. Except for the Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture, the Hebrides
Overture and the finale of the Octet, they had little respect for Mendelssohn, whom
Musorgsky often called ‘Mendel’. Mozart and Haydn were considered out of date
and naive; J. S. Bach was held to be petrified, yes, even a musico-mathematical,
feelingless, and deadly nature, composing like a very machine. Handel was
considered a strong nature, but he was mentioned rarely. Chopin was likened by
Balakirev to a nervous society lady […] the majority of his compositions were
looked upon as pretty lacework and no more. Berlioz, whose works they were just
beginning to know, was highly esteemed. Liszt was comparatively unknown and
was adjudged crippled and perverted from a musical perspective.8

Balakirev’s reported opinion of Liszt here is revealing, and demonstrates a prejudice

against composers about whom he actually knew very little, but whose music he
would later emulate rather closely. When it came to Tchaikovsky, therefore, Balakirev
was automatically distrustful, the latter having graduated from the St. Petersburg
Conservatory under the arch-enemy Rubinstein, and thus being viewed as staid and
conservative. However, upon their meeting in 1868, Balakirev revised his view to
one of cautious respect.9 A later comment from Rimsky-Korsakov is particularly
pertinent in this respect, when he said to Yastrebtsev in 1894 that ‘Balakirev has
always approved and loved in music only what he himself has discovered.’10
This was also to be true with regard to Liszt, who, according to Rimsky-Korsakov,
was admired by the Balakirev circle by 1865,11 and, albeit to a lesser extent, with

8
‘Вкусы кружка тяготели к Глинке, Шуману и последним квартетам
Бетховена. Восемь симфоний Бетховена пользовались сравительно незначительным
расположением кружка. Мендельсон, кроме увертюры Сон в летнюю ночь, Hebriden
и финала октета, был мало уважаем и часто назывался Мусоргским «Менделем».
Моцарт и Гайдн счутались устарившими и наивными; С. Бах –окаменелым, даже
просто музыкально-математической, бесчувственной и мертвенной натурой,
сочинявяей как какя-то машина. Гендель считалься сильной натурой, но, впрочем,
о нем мало упоминалось. Шопен приравнивался Балакиревым к нервной светской
даме […] большинство сочинений его считалось какими-то красивыми кружевами
и только. Берлиоз, с которым только что начинали знакомиться, весьма уважался.
Лист был сравнительно мало известен и признавался изломанным и извращенным в
музыкальном отношении….’ Letopis’, p. 13; My Musical Life, pp.20–21.
9
Letopis’, p. 46; My Musical Life, p. 75.
10
Yastrebtsev, Reminiscences, p. 84.
11
Letopis’, p. 46; My Musical Life, p. 66.
 ‘The end of opera itself’ 27

regard to Chopin. These hastily formed opinions were initially accepted by Rimsky-
Korsakov, to be re-evaluated later; this is one reason why his own opinions underwent
great changes over the course of his life. Indeed, Rimsky-Korsakov’s own opinion of
Chopin changed completely later on, and in a letter of 20 August 1898 to his librettist
Bel’sky, far from speaking of some ‘nervous society lady’ he wrote of Chopin’s
originality and creativity: ‘Chopin is an inexhaustible spring; in melodic writing he
made not just one, but a thousand new statements.’12
Early in his creative life, however, Rimsky-Korsakov adhered to the views of
his circle as prescribed by Balakirev. With regard to Russian composers known by
the circle at the time:

They respected Dargomïzhsky for the recitative portions of Rusalka […]

Rubinstein had a reputation as a pianist, but was thought to have neither talent
nor taste as a composer. Serov […] was passed over in silence.13

A preference for the relatively modern approach of Dargomïzhsky, typical of the

early Balakirev circle, is evident, as is a contempt for a perceived conservative
element represented by Rubinstein.14 Later in his memoirs Rimsky-Korsakov
referred to this again, stating that ‘the origin of music that interested it was traced
by Balakirev’s circle no further back than to Beethoven’.15 Rimsky-Korsakov is
typically candid about his acceptance of these views:

I listened to these opinions with avidity and absorbed the tastes of Balakirev, Cui
and Musorgsky without reasoning or examination.16

Rimsky-Korsakov’s opinions on other composers, then, were more or less

decided for him when he began his fledgling career as a composer, starting

12
‘Шопен – неистощимый родник; в образовании мелодии он сказал не одно, а
тыцячу новых слов,’ in V. N. Rimskiy-Korsakov and A. Orlova (eds), ‘“Strannaya krasota
i prichudlivaya simmetriya”: iz perepiski N. A. Rimskogo-Korsakova s V. I. Bel’skim’ [“A
strange beauty and wonderful symmetry”: from the correspondence between N. A. Rimsky-
Korsakov and V. I. Bel’sky], Sovetskaya muzïka 2 (1976), p. 98, col. 2.
13
‘Даргомыжского уважали за речитативную часть Русалки […] Рубинштейн
пользовался репутацией только пианиста, а как композитор считался бездарным и без
вкусным. Серов […] о нем молчали.’ Letopis’, p. 13; My Musical Life, p. 21.
14
Rubinstein founded the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1862, based on traditional,
Western grounds. For an account of his rivalry with the Balakirev circle, see R. C. Ridenour,
Nationalism, Modernism and Personal Rivalry in Nineteenth-Century Russian Music (Ann
Arbor, 1981).
15
‘Кружок Балакирева вел начало интересующей его музыки только с
Бетховена.’ Letopis’, p. 163; My Musical Life, p. 286.
16
‘Я с жадностью прислушивался к этим мнениям и без рассуждения и проверки
вбирал в себя вкусы Балакирева, Кюи и Мусоргского.’ Letopis’, p. 13; My Musical Life,
p. 21. Borodin was not a member of the kuchka until shortly after this, in 1862.
28 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

properly with the premiere of his first symphony in 1865. This symphony was
composed over a relatively long period of time, beginning around 1860, shortly
before his acquaintance with Balakirev. The long period of composition can be
explained by the fact that Rimsky-Korsakov was assigned, as naval cadet, to go
on a world-wide tour of duty (1862–65). This break from the intense musical
atmosphere to which he had very quickly become accustomed may help to
explain the subsequent changes in opinion that Rimsky-Korsakov underwent in
the years following this cruise, which allowed him to become distanced from the
opinions of others on music.
As early as 1867, just two years after his return to St. Petersburg, Rimsky-
Korsakov recalls his first conflicts with Balakirev, over a criticism of the older
man’s teaching methods;17 Rimsky-Korsakov later wrote that from the Spring of
1868 ‘signs of coolness sprang up between Balakirev and me for the first time.’18
From this time onwards, the opinions of Balakirev can no longer automatically be
assumed to be those of Rimsky-Korsakov, since by this stage he was beginning to
question Balakirev’s judgment, rather than simply accepting it. It is from this point
that Rimsky-Korsakov’s musical opinions begin to emerge in their own right, even
though it was to be some years yet before the ultimate dispersal of the younger
members of the kuchka as independent composers.
The other most important factor in the increasing independence of Rimsky-
Korsakov, and to a lesser extent the other kuchkists, was Balakirev’s own personal
crisis which took place between the years 1872–76. During these years he became
a virtual recluse towards his former friends, and when he finally emerged from this
crisis in 1876 he was a completely changed person.19 Rimsky-Korsakov summed it
up, stating that ‘the Balakirev of the eighties was not the Balakirev of the sixties.’20
These four years were almost certainly of vital importance for the development
of Rimsky-Korsakov’s individuality. It was during this time that he began to throw
himself into the scrutiny of music other than that which Balakirev had permitted him to
study. The main reason for this was his invitation by Mikhail Pavlovich Azanchevsky,
in 1871, to become Professor of Practical Composition and Instrumentation at the
St. Petersburg Conservatory.21 Rimsky-Korsakov was completely unready for a
post such as this, having only the vaguest knowledge of musical theory himself.
Although it was Balakirev’s initial wish that Rimsky-Korsakov accept this post, ‘the
main objective being to get one of his own men into the hostile Conservatory’,22 it

17
Letopis’, p. 51; My Musical Life, p. 85.
18
‘...между мною и Балакиревым начали ощущаться впервые некоторые
признаки охладения.’ Letopis’, p. 54; My Musical Life, p. 90.
19
Letopis’, p. 98; My Musical Life, p. 169.
20
‘Балакирев 80-х годов не был Балакиревым 60-х.’ Letopis’, p. 150; My Musical
Life, p. 263.
21
Letopis’, p. 69; My Musical Life, p. 115–16.
22
‘...главным образом имея в виду провести своего во враждебную ему
консерваторию.’ Letopis’, p. 69; My Musical Life, p. 116.
 ‘The end of opera itself’ 29

proved ultimately to be the main route via which Rimsky-Korsakov broke away
from Balakirev’s influence and opinions.
By 1875, Rimsky-Korsakov’s opinion of Bach and other older composers was
beginning to alter radically from the extreme views held by Balakirev. During the
summer of this year, Rimsky-Korsakov began to acquaint himself closely with the
techniques of Bach as part of his programme of self-education:

I played and scanned Bach a great deal and came to honour his genius very
highly […] all our modern music [owes] everything to Bach.23

How different was this from the former view of Bach, accepted on face value
by Rimsky-Korsakov, as ‘mathematical’ and dry. This newly acquired reverence
for the works of older composers was reflected the same year in the programme
of a concert conducted by Rimsky-Korsakov at the Free School of Music (27
March 1875), which included extracts from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (albeit
in Robert Franz’s modern orchestral arrangement), Handel’s Israel in Egypt,
Allegri’s Miserere, Haydn’s symphony in D major, and a Kyrie by Palestrina. The
extremely ‘classical’ leanings of this concert programme even prompted Balakirev,
from his general silence at this time, to criticize Rimsky-Korsakov’s new-found
tendencies.24 Rimsky-Korsakov’s admiration for Palestrina is also evident; indeed,
he wrote of how foolish Berlioz had been to criticize Palestrina, a view which
he might formerly have accepted without question.25 Rimsky-Korsakov’s high
regard for Bach was confirmed in 1897, when, during his own personal crisis
of confidence, he spent practically the whole Summer practising and analyzing
fugues by Bach and Mozart in an attempt re-evaluate his musical language and
imbue it with a greater sense of stylistic eclecticism and formal rigour.
Rimsky-Korsakov also began to re-evaluate his opinions towards his fellow
Russians at this time. His high regard for Glinka was to remain strong throughout his
life; this was also true of his opinion of Balakirev as a composer. However, the gulf
between the two former friends on a personal level was becoming more and more
pronounced. Rimsky-Korsakov was less than complimentary about Balakirev’s
editorial work on Glinka’s operas carried out between 1878–81.26 He also described
more than once Balakirev’s visits to the gatherings that had started to take place at
his (Rimsky-Korsakov’s) house, and especially the feeling of relief felt by all when
Balakirev finally left sometime during the evening.27 By 1880, the younger man’s
view of his former circle of compositional comrades had matured greatly, as evinced
in a letter to Semyon Nikolayevich Kruglikov of 9 November 1880:

23
‘Я много играл и просматривал С. Баха и стил высоко чтить его гений […]
вся наша современная музыка обязана Баху.’ Letopis’, p. 89; My Musical Life, p. 151–2.
24
Letopis’, p. 90; My Musical Life, p. 154.
25
Letopis’, p. 89; My Musical Life, p. 152.
26
Letopis’, p. 100; My Musical Life, p. 173.
27
See, for example, Letopis’, p. 147; My Musical Life, p. 257.
30 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

Owing to inadequate technique, Balakirev writes […] little, Borodin with

difficulty, Cui in a slipshod way, Mussorgsky sloppily and often absurdly.28

This was balanced by Rimsky-Korsakov’s sustained respect for the actual works
of these composers, and an admiration for their natural talent, despite their lack of
training. He continued in the same letter:

Don’t imagine that my attitude towards their compositions has changed even
a whit! If these people possessed a good technique, what would they mean!29

Yet despite this admiration, Rimsky-Korsakov’s real view on the value of a proper
musical education predominates, as he concluded:

Believe me, although, speaking perfectly frankly, I consider that they possess far
more talent than [me], yet I don’t envy them a penny’s worth.30

Such a professional attitude towards musicianship and compositional technique

was to remain with Rimsky-Korsakov for the rest of his life, and was fundamental
to the shaping of much of his mature output. It also informed his views of Wagner,
particularly with regard to the hierarchy of music versus drama in opera, as will
be seen.
With regard to Tchaikovsky, towards whom the kuchka had been at first hostile
and then cautiously respectful, Rimsky-Korsakov began to show the utmost
admiration. When, in 1875, Tchaikovsky entered a competition to compose an
opera on the subject of Gogol’s tale Kuznets Vakula [Vakula the Smith], Rimsky-
Korsakov (one of the judges) wrote to Tchaikovsky on 1 October:

But you are such a superb and, most importantly, original harmonist! […] In my
opinion if it were not for your opera, not one of [the entrants to the competition]…
would be worthy of even getting a sniff at the first prize, let alone being staged.31

Of the love theme from Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet overture, Rimsky-
Korsakov said to Yastrebtsev in 1892: ‘What inexplicable beauty, what burning
passion! It’s one of the best themes in all Russian music.’32

28
Quoted in English in My Musical Life, p. 242, n. 7.
29
Ibid.
30
Ibid.
31
‘А какой вы превосходный и, главное, оригинальный гармонист! […] Не
будь вашей операы, ни одна из них недостойна была бы даже понюхать премии
или постановки на сцене, по мнению моему.’ ‘Perepiska P. I. Tchaikovskogo i N. A.
Rimskogo-Korsakova’ [Correspondence between P. I. Tchaikovsky and N. A. Rimsky-
Korsakov], Sovetskaya muzïka, 3 (1945), p. 127.
32
Yastrebtsev, Reminiscences, p. 19.
 ‘The end of opera itself’ 31

As the years progressed, Rimsky-Korsakov began to distance himself more

and more from the views to which he had earlier subscribed without hesitation.
Back in 1876 he still had the loyalty to state in a letter to P. Fyodorov the following
view on Cui’s opera Angelo:

Mr Cui’s opera is a remarkable work of the highest talent, and all that remains
for it is to be staged.33

But his comment in a letter of 1898 to his librettist, Bel’sky, shows his revised
opinion of another former kuchka hero, Dargomïzhsky: ‘Enough of the Stone
Guest! Music, too, is needed.’34 Rimsky-Korsakov even played down his debt
to Glinka somewhat, denying in another letter to Bel’sky (13 August 1907) the
marked similarity of certain figurations in his own opera Zolotoy petushok [The
Golden Cockerel] to certain passages in Glinka’s Ruslan i Lyudmila [Ruslan and
Lyudmila],35 a comparison that might earlier have elicited pride and gratification
in the composer.
Rimsky-Korsakov’s views on Aleksandr Serov are perhaps even more
interesting. When Serov’s opera Rogneda was premiered at the Mariinsky
Theatre in October 1865, the Balakirev circle had heaped scorn upon it; since
Serov was Balakirev’s arch-rival, a confirmed Wagnerite, and represented all
that was distasteful to them. However worthy the music, and however skilled a
composer Serov might have been, Rogneda would never have been acceptable in
Balakirev’s eyes. But, looking back on this period, Rimsky-Korsakov admitted
the following in his memoirs: ‘I must confess that Rogneda aroused deep interest
in me, and I liked a good deal in it.’36 Although the benefit of hindsight is very
much in evidence (Rimsky-Korsakov would never have expressed this opinion
openly in 1865), the comment is symptomatic of the more moderate character
that Rimsky-Korsakov seems to have possessed from the start, even if he was not
permitted by circumstances to express this side of his personality. Once he had
broken away from the kuchka, however, Rimsky-Korsakov had no qualms about

33
‘Опера г. Кюи представляет произведение в высшей степени талантливое и
замечательное и оставляет только желать постановки его на сцене.’ ‘Iz istorii russkoy
operï’ [From the history of Russian opera] Sovetskaya muzïka 9 (1954), p. 77.
34
‘Довольно Каменного гостя! Надо и музыки.’ ‘“Strannaya krasota i prichudlivaya
simmetriya”: iz perepiski N. A. Rimskogo-Korsakova s V. I. Bel’skim’ [“A strange beauty
and wonderful symmetry”: from the correspondence between N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov and
V. I. Bel’sky], Sovetskaya muzïka 2 (1976), p. 99, col. 1.
35
‘Iz perepiski N. A. Rimskogo-Korsakova s V. I. Bel’skim’ [From the correspondence
between N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov and V. I. Bel’sky], Sovetskaya muzïka 6 (1976), pp. 100–
101.
36
‘Не могу не сознаться, что Рогнеда меня сильно заинтересовала, и многое мне
в ней понравилось.’ Letopis’, p. 43; My Musical Life, p. 69.
32 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

acknowledging Serov’s talent to Yastrebtsev,37 probably in the knowledge that

some day this opinion would be published. And although in 1907, for example, he
described Serov’s Judith as ‘crude, inept, and trite,’38 it is interesting to note the
various reflections of, and quotations from, Serov’s music to be found in Rimsky-
Korsakov’s operas, as observed by Richard Taruskin.39

Developing Views on Wagner

The summary of Rimsky-Korsakov’s evolving opinions on the music of other

composers provided above reveals an emerging objectivity that would become
particularly important with regard to Wagner, whose works (if not theories)
underwent a similar re-evaluation in Rimsky-Korsakov’s eyes. His early view of
the German composer mirrored that of the Balakirev circle, and specifically of
Balakirev himself. It is worth noting this earlier attitude in order to understand
their subsequent modification.
In the very early days of the Balakirev circle, little was said of Wagner, due
to lack of knowledge of his works. What was known was little understood, and
thus condemned to the criticism of silence.40 Wagner visited Russia in February
1863, thus giving the kuchkists the opportunity to become acquainted with
this important figure’s personality, conducting skills and works. Significantly,
however, Rimsky-Korsakov missed this visit, since he was away on a three-year
tour of duty as an officer cadet with the Russian navy (1862–65). Consequently,
for the next few years he had to rely exclusively on the opinions of his colleagues
for first-hand accounts of Wagner. Crucially, as previously noted, it also later
permitted a certain objective distance from the vehement polemics of that
period.41
Although Wagner was acknowledged by Balakirev as a genius in the realm of
conducting,42 there was no doubt that the other areas of his activity were viewed
with the utmost contempt. When comparing the Balakirev circle with the later
group that formed around the publisher Mitrofan Petrovich Belayev, Rimsky-
Korsakov remarked that ‘Balakirev’s circle hated Wagner and strained to take
no notice of him.’43 When Lohengrin was staged at the Mariinsky Theatre on 4

37
Yastrebtsev, Reminiscences, p. 43.
38
Ibid., p. 417.
39
See, for example, Richard Taruskin, Opera and Drama in Russia as Preached and
Practiced in the 1860s (Ann Arbor, 1981), pp. 116–17.
40
Letopis’, p. 13; My Musical Life, p. 21.
41
For more on Wagner’s visit to Russia, see Bartlett, Wagner and Russia, pp. 18–28.
42
Letopis’, p. 38; My Musical Life, p. 62.
43
‘Балакиревский кружок ненавидел Вагнера и тщился не обращать на него
внимания.’ Letopis’, p. 161; My Musical Life, p. 287.
 ‘The end of opera itself’ 33

October 1868, Balakirev’s circle ridiculed it mercilessly, though apparently for no

good reason.44 Looking back on events, Rimsky-Korsakov wrote in his memoirs:

Yet at that time Wagner had already half finished his Der Ring des Nibelungen
and had composed Die Meistersinger, in which with experience and skilful hand
he had broken new paths for art, far, far in advance of us advanced Russians!45

Again, hindsight is a powerful filter through which to view one’s earlier opinions,
but there is little to suggest that Rimsky-Korsakov did not join in the ridiculing
in 1868. Wagner was seen as a threat to Balakirev’s ambitions for a truly national
Russian school of music, rooted in the Russian folk tradition and unsullied by
external influences beyond Balakirev’s sphere of experience. The fact that
Balakirev’s nemesis Serov admired and promoted Wagner was fuel enough for the
vehemence of the kuchka’s mockery.
Rimsky-Korsakov’s third opera, Snegurochka, has often been labelled a music
drama along Wagnerian lines.46 Yet it was composed in 1880–81 when, at least
from his own accounts, the composer’s knowledge of Wagner was somewhat
incomplete. In a passage in his memoirs Rimsky-Korsakov recalls:

I have made wide use of leading motives (Leitmotive) in Snegurochka. At the

time I knew little of Wagner, and whatever I did know, I knew superficially.
Nevertheless, the employment of Leitmotive is present in Pskovityanka [The
Maid of Pskov, 1868–72; rev. 1868–77, 1891–92], Mayskaya noch’ [May Night,
1878–79], and particularly in Snegurochka. No doubt my use of leading motives
is different from Wagner’s. With him they serve as the material from which the
orchestral fabric is woven. In addition to this, with me the Leitmotive appear
also in the singing voices, and often they are component parts of a more of less
lengthy theme, as for example in the principal melody of [the Snow Maiden]
herself, and likewise the theme of Tsar Berendey.47

44
Letopis’, p. 61; My Musical Life, p. 101.
45
‘А в это самое время Нибелунги уже были наполовину готовы и сочинены
были Нюренбергские певци, в которых Вагнер опытной и умелой рукой пробивал
дорогу искусству куда далее вперед по сравнению с нами, русскими передовиками!’
Ibid.
46
See Gregory A. Halbe, ‘Music, drama and folklore in Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s
opera Snegurochka [Snowmaiden]’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, Ohio State University,
2004), pp. 152–74 for a discussion of this and other aspects of Snegurochka.
47
‘Применение руководящих мотивов (Leitmotiv [sic]) мною использовано в
Снегурочке. В ту пору я мало знал Вагнера, а поскольку знал, то знал поверхностно.
Тем не менее пользование лейтмотивами проходит через Псковитянку, Майскую
ночь и, в особенности, через Снегурочку. Пользование лейтмотивами у меня
несомненно инное, чем у Вагнера. У него они являются всегда в качестве
материала, из которого сплетается оркестровая ткань. У меня же, кроме подобного
34 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

The paragraph is instructive on a number of levels. Apart from anything, it

illustrates the danger of labelling any device in a composition that identifies
characters musically as a Wagnerian leitmotif, since quite clearly when he
composed Pskovityanka and Mayskaya noch’ Rimsky-Korsakov had little
knowledge of Wagner and his methods. It also illuminates, as Gregory Halbe
has observed, a ‘rather unsophisticated assessment of Wagnerian leitmotive’ on
the part of Rimsky-Korsakov and shared by other Russians at the time.48 The
passage was written in 1905, suggesting that this naïve understanding of Wagner
continued throughout Rimsky-Korsakov’s life, even if events towards the end
of the 1880s (described below) led to a far deeper appreciation. The sentiment
was later echoed in a rather more mocking vein in Rimsky-Korsakov’s 1892
essay (unpublished during his lifetime) ‘Vagner: Sovokupnoye proizvedeniye
dvukh iskusstv, ili muzykal’naya drama’:

If character A, finding himself in a certain mood, were to speak with

character B about character C, and if in the accompanying music we hear
the contrapuntally interwoven motives A, B and C, perhaps with the addition
of a fourth denoting their mood, can one then clearly distinguish such a
situation from the reverse: i.e., where C speaks to A about B, or B and C
discuss A?49

Despite the increasing distance placed between himself and his former kuchka
colleagues, and despite the powerful musical events that Rimsky-Korsakov
had witnessed in St Petersburg in 1888–89 (described below), his opinion thus
remained cool toward many of the key elements of Wagner’s musical language.

применения, лейтмотивы появляются и в поющих голосах, а иногда являются

составными частями более или менее длинной темы, как например. Главной
мелодии самой Снегурочки, а также в теме царя Берендея. Иногда лейтмотивы
являются действительно ритмико-мелодическими мотивами, иногда же только как
гармонические последовательностиь в таких случаях они скорее могли бы быть
названы лейтгармониями. Такие руководящие гармонии трудно уловимы для слуха
массы публики, которая предпочтительнее схватывает вагнеровские лейтмотивы,
напоминающие грубые военные сигналы.’ Letopis’, p. 138; My Musical Life, pp.
240–41.
48
Halbe, ‘Music, drama and folklore in Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera
Snegurochka’, p. 169.
49
‘И в самом деле, если действующее лицо А находясь в известном настроении
говорит с лицом Б о третьем действующем лице В и если в сопровождающей музыке
будут звучать контрапунктически переплетенные мотивы А, Б и В да на придачу
четвертый мотив их настроения, то можно ли ярко отличать такое положение от
обратного, т. е. когда действующее лицо В будет говорить с А о лице Б или В и Б
разговорятся об А?’ Rimskiy-Korsakov, ‘Vagner: Sovokupnoye proizvedeniye dvukh
iskusstv, ili muzykal’naya drama’, p. 54.
 ‘The end of opera itself’ 35

Der Ring in St Petersburg

A major turning point vis-à-vis Wagner for Rimsky-Korsakov, as for so many

Russians of his generation, took place in the 1888–89 opera season, when Der
Ring was produced in Russia for the first time.50 Rimsky-Korsakov attended both
the rehearsals and the performances of the cycle, which had an extremely profound
impact upon him, and set in motion a more intense struggle – whether to be for or
against Wagner – that was never quite resolved. The immediate result was deep
admiration, particularly in the realm of orchestration:

Wagner’s method of orchestration struck Glazunov and me, and thenceforth

Wagner’s devices gradually began to form a part of our orchestral tricks of the
trade.51

This was soon to be evident in the score to Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera-ballet Mlada

(1889–90), as he later wrote in his autobiography:

I made up my mind not to restrict myself in means, but to have in view an

increased orchestra like Wagner’s in Der Ring.52

Two years later, on a visit to Brussels, Rimsky-Korsakov recalled his ‘good

fortune’ in seeing Der fliegende Holländer [мне удалось услышать Моряка-
скитальца],53 and in 1891, reported Yastrebtsev, ‘Balakirev notwithstanding,
Nikolay Andreyevich reveres Wagner.’54
This new-found reverence for Wagner’s musical bombast was to continue
for some time; one quite spectacular musical manifestation was the prelude-
cantata Iz Gomera [From Homer, 1901], in which the entry of the trombones in
the introduction (Example 2.1) shows clear signs that Rimsky-Korsakov admired
at the very least the more externally exciting features of Der Ring, and more
specifically the ‘Walkürenritt’ [Ride of the Valkyries] from the beginning of Act
III of Die Walküre.55

50
Der Ring was performed four times in St Petersburg and once in Moscow by the
Prague-based opera troupe of Angelo Neumann, conducted by Karl Muck. See Rosamund
Bartlett, Wagner and Russia (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 46–8.
51
‘Вагнеровский способ оркестровки поразил меня и Глазунова, и с тех пор
приемы Вагнера стали мало-помалу входить в наш оркестровый обиход.’ Letopis’,
p. 169; My Musical Life, p. 298.
52
‘Я решился не стесняться средствами и иметь в виду усиленный оркестр
вроде вагнеровского в Нибелунгах’. Letopis’, p. 171; My Musical Life, p. 301.
53
Letopis’, p. 174; My Musical Life, p. 306.
54
Yastrebtsev, Reminiscences, p. 14.
55
All examples are taken from the Complete Edition of Rimsky-Korsakov’s works
(Belwin Mills, 1980– ).
36 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

Example 2.1 Rimsky-Korsakov, Iz Gomera, introduction (fig. 1), trombone entry

Notably, in his 1892 essay on Wagner Rimsky-Korsakov had written of his

admiration above all for the ceremonial and descriptive elements in Wagner –
processions, dances, set pieces, orchestral interludes – elements which clearly
found their way without practical or ideological difficulty into Rimsky-Korsakov’s
music. However, doubts about Wagner’s legacy were never far from Rimsky-
Korsakov’s mind, starting with a dislike for the ‘cult’ of Wagnerism:

Now I’ll tell you what I dislike mainly about Wagner […] That’s ‘Wagnerism’,
for it’s a kind of a cult, a sort of religion in art. Now, by its very nature, no
religion tolerates criticism, and this is bad.56

Similar worries about the influence of Wagner on others increased with time
(perhaps a reaction to Balakirev’s early domination of Rimsky-Korsakov himself),
especially when it came to the question of Wagner’s impact on the progressive
composers of the day. Thus Yastrebtsev reported from 1898:

While Rimsky-Korsakov still retains his earlier respect for [Wagner’s] genius,
he is coming more and more to dislike his style of writing, which has produced
in the West, among his present-day […] followers, such ugly and outrageous
creations as Strauss’ Guntram and Zarathustra and Bruneau’s Messidor.57

Yastrebtsev’s comments on Strauss and Bruneau could well be his own opinions,
rather than those of Rimsky-Korsakov; but the latter’s views on Strauss were
indeed outspoken to say the least, and he never fully acclimatised to the modernist

56
Yastrebtsev, Reminiscences, p. 173.
57
Ibid., p. 209.
 ‘The end of opera itself’ 37

tendencies of Wagner’s most ardent musical descendents. In 1900 he referred to

Zarathustra as ‘such rubbish,’58 and later, in 1907, wrote to his son Mikhail:

Well, we have at last heard Salome. Never before did such filth exist upon the
Earth. Your papa even booed for the first time ever in his life.59

Rimsky-Korsakov wrote to Bel’sky later the same year:

I shall get rid of [realistic expression such as that found in Strauss’s works]. For
I will allow beauty alone, and no kind of ‘passionate, wild noises...’60

One of the only composers that came in for more criticism than Strauss was Mahler.
Yastrebtsev reported a gathering at Rimsky-Korsakov’s house in 1906 at which ‘it
was general agreed that [Mahler’s 5th Symphony] is very weak and utterly devoid
of genius.’61 Rimsky-Korsakov later described Mahler’s 2nd symphony as ‘coarse’
and ‘tasteless’,62 and his real contempt for Mahler was finally revealed with typical
dry wit in 1907, when he said to Yastrebtsev that ‘in truth, he [Mahler] is a house
painter. Far worse that Richard Strauss.’63
Rimsky-Korsakov again spoke of Strauss as a follower of Wagner in 1899, in
another letter to Bel’sky. Here he now took Wagner and his progeny to task for an
over-abundance of philosophy in opera:

That’s how it was with Wagner, and, once he’d set the ball rolling, with d’Indy,
Richard Strauss, even Weingartner; but I have a story - and what a story!64

The story in question was his opera Skazka o Tsare Saltane [The tale of Tsar
Saltan, 1899–1900], a return to the simple world of fairy-tales and folk-inspired

58
Ibid., p. 254.
59
‘Ну, слушали мы, наконец, Саломею. Это такая гадость, какой другой не
существует на свете. Даже папа в первый раз в жизни шикал.’ ‘Iz perepiski N. A.
Rimskogo-Korsakova s V. I. Bel’skim’ [From the correspondence between N. A. Rimsky-
Korsakov and V. I. Bel’sky], Sovetskaya muzïka 6 (1976), p. 103, n. 2 to letter 83.
60
‘Я ее изгоняю, ибо допускаю только красоту, а “страстные, дикие звуки”, не
того…’. Ibid., p. 97.
61
Yastrebtsev, Reminiscences, p. 394.
62
Ibid. p. 418.
63
Ibid., p. 419. Here Rimsky-Korsakov was making a pun on the German verb
‘malen’ [to paint].
64
‘Так было у Вагнера, а с его легкой руки у д’Энди, у Р. Штрауса, да и у
Вейнгартнера; а у меня сказка – так сказка!’ ‘“Strannaya krasota i prichudlivaya
simmetriya”: iz perepiski N. A. Rimskogo-Korsakova s V. I. Bel’skim’ [“A strange beauty
and wonderful symmetry”: from the correspondence between N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov and
V. I. Bel’sky], Sovetskaya muzïka 2 (1976), p. 102.
38 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

melody, and this comment is symptomatic of an increasing dissatisfaction with

Wagner’s aesthetic philosophical legacy. The most extreme expressions of this
dissatisfaction came after the turn of the century, when perhaps Rimsky-Korsakov
could sense the momentous musical changes that would ensue in the new century
in the wake of Wagner and his followers. With reference to Siegfried, as quoted at
the very start of this chapter, he wrote to his son Andrey in June 1901, stating that
‘I often wonder if he (Wagner) has set in motion the end of opera itself, the fate of
which is corrupted forever.’65 Sensing in the music of Mahler, Strauss and others a
tide of musical developments towards more modern tendencies in Wagner’s wake,
and unable to reconcile himself with the philosophical fallout from Wagner’s
works and theories, Rimsky-Korsakov found himself forced to conclude that the
very art form itself was doomed.

Studying Siegfried, Composing Kashchey

One explanation for this uneasiness can be detected in a letter from Rimsky-
Korsakov’s wife Nadezhda to Andrey, written the week before the composer had
questioned with his son the very future of opera itself after Wagner, which reveals
that he had in fact embarked on a close study of Siegfried:

Papa has recently been studying Siegfried, playing the piano reduction and
comparing it with the full score, and has been giving Wagner a strong ticking
off for his impermissible harmonies and his unrefined writing. Papa puts these
shortcomings down to Wagner’s excessive self-opinion. […] But he can forgive
Wagner anything because there is much good, even genius [in his music].66

One of the results of this intensive scrutiny of Wagner was the completion of
Rimsky-Korsakov’s twelfth opera, Kashchey bessmertnïy [Kashchey the Immortal,
1902], after he had abandoned it in February 1901 following dissatisfaction with
the libretto prepared for him by Evgeny Maksimovich Petrovsky, a friend of

65
‘Часто приходит в голову, не положено ли им (Вагнер) настоящее начало
конца оперной музыке, судьба которой испорчена навсегда.’ ‘Iz neopublikovannïkh
dokumentov pis’ma k sïnu Andreyu’ [From the unpublished letters to his son Andrey]
Sovetskaya muzïka 6 (1958), p. 68.
66
‘Последнее время папа изучал Зигфрида, играл клавир-аусцуг, сличал с
партитурой и сильно побранивал Вагнера за его непозволительные гармонические
жесткости и бесцеремонность письма. Папа объясняет этот недостаток Вагнера его
чрезмерным самомнением [...] Но Вагнеру все можно простить ради того хорошего
и даже гениального, что есть у него...’. Andrey Nikolayevich Rimskiy-Korsakov, N. A.
Rimskiy-Korsakov: zhizn’ i tvorchestvo [N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov: life and works] vol. 5
(Moscow, 1946), p. 63.
 ‘The end of opera itself’ 39

Nikolay Fyodorovich Findeyzen (the editor of Russkaya muzykal’naya gazeta).67

A letter from Rimsky-Korsakov to the composer Aleksandr Konstantinovich
Glazunov of 10 July 1901 demonstrates the direct influence that studying Wagner
had exerted upon the composition of Kashchey:

In the last few days of June I turned my attention to a different opera – an arch-
fantastic one, not very long. […] The form will be Wagnerian; there will be
strong sequences and chords with unconnected voice-leading. It’s time I took a
step forward in this respect.68

Kashchey also made use of such devices as leitmotif, and the themes portraying
the opera’s main characters (three of which are shown in Examples 2.2a and 2.2b)
are sustained and developed throughout the opera in a variety of situations and
settings.

Example 2.2a Rimsky-Korsakov, Kashchey bessmertnïy, scene i (bar 1), themes

of Kashchey and the Princess

67
Petrovsky had originally presented Rimsky-Korsakov with the idea of Kashchey in
November 1900, and subsequently revised it twice, before the composer eventually enlisted
the help of his daughter Sonya in completing the final version of the libretto (see Andrey
Nikolayevich Rimskiy-Korsakov, N. A. Rimskiy-Korsakov, Zhizn′ i tvorchestvo, vol. 5,
p. 50 and Letopis’, p. 223; My Musical Life, p. 400).
68
‘С последних же чисел июля я принялся за другую оперу –
архифантастическую, небольшую [...] Форма будет вагнеровская, будут сильные
переченья и аккорды с несвязным голосоведением. Пора в этом отношении
сделать мне шаг вперед.’ N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov to A. K. Glazunov, 10 July 1901,
in N. A. Rimskiy-Korsakov, Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy: Literaturnïye proizvedeniya
i perepiska [Complete collected works: literary works and correspondence] (Moscow,
1960), vol. 6, pp. 116–17.
40 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

Example 2.2b Rimsky-Korsakov, Kashchey bessmertnïy, scene iii (4 bars

before fig. 93), theme of Ivan Korolevich

Example 2.3 Rimsky-Korsakov, Kashchey bessmertnïy, scene I (fig. 32), tritone

sustained throughout snow-storm episode

Richard Taruskin’s analysis establishes that the work contains a great deal more that
can be directly attributed to Wagner, especially the persistent use of harmonies based
upon diminished and augmented triads derived from the octatonic and whole-tone
scales,69 harmonies encountered in most of Rimsky-Korsakov’s operas that contain
some element of magic. Ever since his experience of Der Ring in 1889, Rimsky-
Korsakov had experimented with aspects of Wagnerian tonality and instrumentation,
leading to the composition of the opera-ballet Mlada, with its extravagant scoring
and harmonies. Taruskin suggests that Rimsky-Korsakov’s new-found acquaintance
with Siegfried gave rise to another “Wagnerian seizure”,70 the result of which was the
enhanced chromaticism of most of Kashchey. An interesting feature of Example 2.2a
is the tritone in the bass line during bars 4–8. In the context of the descending series
of major thirds in bars 5–8 this tritone becomes relatively stable in a tonal sense.
This use of the tritone as an ‘incipient tonal axis’ (Taruskin’s term) is an important
aspect of the opera’s chromatic harmonic idiom, and is seen most consistently
throughout the opera’s snow-storm scene. Taruskin compares this directly with Act

69
Richard Taruskin, ‘Chernomor to Kashchey: harmonic sorcery, or Stravinsky’s
“Angle”’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 38/1 (1985), p. 125.
70
Ibid., p. 116.
 ‘The end of opera itself’ 41

II, scene i, of Siegfried, with its ‘tonic tritone’ between C and F#, as he calls it.71 In
Rimsky-Korsakov’s snow-storm the tritone C–F# is made especially prominent by
the orchestration, the two notes standing out of the texture particularly clearly on cor
Anglais and bassoons (Example 2.3).
Rimsky-Korsakov returned to the concept of a stable tritone in his most
accomplished opera, Skazaniye o nevidimom grade Kitezhe i deve Fevronii [The
legend of the invisible city of Kitezh and the maiden Fevroniya, 1903–05], the
third act of which finishes on the interval, sustained in the orchestra (Example 2.4).

Example 2.4 Rimsky-Korsakov, Kitezh, Act III (24 bars after fig. 246), sustained
tritone at end of Act III

Kitezh demonstrates the continued influence of Siegfried right to the height of

Rimsky-Korsakov’s operatic career. Its opening ‘Pokhvala pustïne’ [Hymn to
the wilderness] (Example 2.5) is a closely-observed tribute to the ‘Wachsendes
Waldweben’ [Growing forest murmurs] episode from Act II of Wagner’s opera.

Example 2.5 Rimsky-Korsakov, Kitezh, Prelude (bars 5–13), ‘Hymn to the

wilderness’

Taruskin concludes that the harmony of Kashchey was even more advanced than
that of Rimsky-Korsakov’s sixth opera Sadko (1895–96), which had contained
octatonic writing striking enough for Olivier Messiaen to cite it as a locus classicus

71
Ibid., p. 118. Wagner’s spells this F#–C (timpani), G@–C (double basses).
42 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

of his second mode of limited transposition.72 Taruskin sums up the achievement

of Kashchey thus:

In Kashchey, for the first and practically the only time, Rimsky-Korsakov
purposefully split the octatonic melody scale into two tritonally related
tetrachords held in equilibrium within the diminished mode.73

Rimsky-Korsakov’s harmonic idiom in Kashchey, combining as it did the two

factors of his own ingrained octatonicism and an attempt to absorb tonality
along the lines of Wagner’s Siegfried, had a profound influence upon his
most famous pupil, Stravinsky. But, as Taruskin observes, Rimsky-Korsakov
himself never fully assimilated Wagnerian harmony or made it his own, and the
continual use of rotation by thirds as a modulatory plan in much of his music
indicates a firm grounding in the traditions of the nineteenth century in general,
rather than in Wagner’s more highly spiced tradition specifically. In spite of the
profound influence of Siegfried, then, the stylistic and technical musical traits
that permeate nearly the whole of Rimsky-Korsakov’s output, and especially
the works from before the turn of the century, are still ever-prevalent, even in
Kashchey, his most Wagnerian of works. Indeed, Taruskin elsewhere refers
to Kashchey as a ‘remarkably sustained, ultimately quite un-Wagnerian essay
in evocatively frigid but also exceptionally rigid harmonic sequences.’74 This
did not prevent the opera from causing something of a stir among the press at
its premiere, however, as a series of reviews in the Moscow papers attests.75
Practically all reviewers agreed that the opera had been a success; N. Kochetov,
for example, writing for the Moscow daily paper Moskovskiy listok [Moscow
leaflet], stated the following:

This opera’s success is bound to grow and grow. Why will it increase? Because
it is difficult [at first] to grasp this complex music, with its novel combinations
of sounds; but it will be successful, since there is also an abundance of beautiful
music in Kashchey, together with strongly characterised, and, taken as a whole,
new music.76

72
See Olivier Messiaen, The Technique of my Musical Language, trans. J. Satterfield
(2 vols, Paris, 1956–66), vol. 1, p. 59.
73
Taruskin, ‘Chernomor to Kashchey’, p. 123.
74
Richard Taruskin, On Russian Music (Berkeley, 2009), p. 176.
75
These Moscow reviews were conveniently gathered together for St Petersburg
inhabitants and printed a short while after the opera’s premiere in the pages of Russkaya
muzïkal’naya gazeta (see ‘Periodicheskaya pechat’ o muzïke’ [The periodical press on
music], Russkaya muzïkal’naya gazeta, 5 (1903), cols 145–147). The quotations from these
reviews in this chapter are derived from this source.
76
‘Эта опеpа должна иметь постоянно возрастающий успех. Почему именно
возрастающий? Потому, что воспринять эту сложную музыку, с ея непривычными
 ‘The end of opera itself’ 43

Nikolay Kashkin, a regular supporter of Rimsky-Korsakov’s operas, was eager

to point out the music’s suitability for the depiction of the supernatural, fairy-
tale elements of the subject, thus linking it to Rimsky-Korsakov’s previous
fairy-tale operas:

In the fantastic parts of Kashchey the chromatically diminished or augmented

intervals lend the harmony a completely distinctive colouring […] these
harmonies are extremely interesting and even beautiful in their own right, but
they also speak of a great artistry, and they have a provocative effect.77

All the reviewers spoke of the great technical mastery that was evident in the
composition. Yuly Engel’ suggested that the whole score sounded improvised,
adding, however, that in all this ‘improvisation’ there was much ‘intelligence,
knowledge and preconceived, well-considered intent,’78 and that ‘in Kashchey
there is less inspiration than mastery.’79
Engel’ also observed that the form and style were broadly Wagnerian,80
although Rimsky-Korsakov’s closest Moscow ally, Semyon Kruglikov, identified
the style as a reconciliation of Wagner and Glinka, suggesting that, as a result, the
work was widely accessible:

The task of uniting in one stream two [opposing] currents – Wagner and Glinka
– is settled here boldly, intelligently and skilfully, and often with undoubted
enthusiasm and inspiration […] Kashchey’s style is harmonically new and
contrapuntally complex, but melodious; it is therefore able to captivate not only
the specialist who delights in the complexities of music but also the normal
amateur who approaches music thoughtfully and seriously.81

звуковыми комбинациями не так легко, но успех будет, так как в Кащее бездна музыки
и красивой, и характерной, и, если ее взять всю в совокупности, новой.’ Ibid., col. 145.
77
‘В фантастической части Кащея хроматически уменьщенные или
увеличенные интерваллы дают гармонии совершенно своеобразную окраску […]
эти гармонии чрезвычайно интересны и по своему даже красивы, но отзываются
большой искусственностью, действуют раздражающим образом.’ Ibid., col. 147.
78
‘Всмотритесь поближе в эту импровизацию и вы увидите сколько вложено в
нее ума, знания и заранее обдуманнаго намерения.’ Ibid., col. 146.
79
‘В Кащее меньше вдохновения, чем мастерства.’ Ibid., col. 147.
80
Ibid., col. 145–6.
81
‘Задача соединить в одном русле два течения – Глинку и Вагнера –
разрешается здесь смело, остроумно, талантливо, нередко с несомненным подъемом
и вдохновением […] Стиль Кащея гармонически новой, контрапунктически сложный,
но певучий, и потому способен пленить не только искусивщагося в музык[альных]
компликациях специалиста, но и обычнаго любителя из тех, которые относятся к
музыке вдумчиво и серезно.’ Ibid., col. 147.
44 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

By identifying in the opera a union of elements from Glinka and Wagner,

Kruglikov linked the idiom of Kashchey with the corpus of works written by
Rimsky-Korsakov before Motsart i Sal’eri [Mozart and Salieri, 1897], most of
which shared stylistic and conceptual ancestors in Glinka’s magic, fairy-tale
opera Ruslan i Lyudmila, which Kruglikov almost certainly had in mind. But
even many of these works, composed as they were in the period after Rimsky-
Korsakov’s excitement with Der Ring’s St Petersburg premiere, contain many
Wagnerian elements, such as the near-quotation of Wagner’s ‘nature’ progression
from Das Rheingold in Sadko (Example 2.6) to depict the rising sun at the end
of Tableau II.82

Example 2.6 Rimsky-Korsakov, Sadko, end of Tableau II, ‘the red sun rises’

After Siegfried

But all this musical influence notwithstanding, the study of Siegfried and the
subsequent composition of Kashchey confirmed for Rimsky-Korsakov that, for
him, opera along Wagnerian lines was ultimately unsustainable, and would lead
to the downfall of the genre. A visit to Dresden in 1902 gave Rimsky-Korsakov
the opportunity to see Götterdämerung.83 Although this rekindled his enthusiasm
for Wagner for a little while, by the end of the year he would write to his son,
asking himself:

82
Donington identifies a similar motif (which he labels no. 25) as ‘sunlight standing
for returning consciousness’, an apt corollary to Sadko’s emergence from his dream-like
state at the end of Tableau II; see Robert Donington, Wagner’s ‘Ring’ and its Symbols
(London, 1963), p. 285.
83
Letopis’, p. 224–5; My Musical Life, p. 403.
 ‘The end of opera itself’ 45

Has the degeneration of opera as an art form begun? It’s impossible to return
to older forms of opera; neither can the Wagnerian operatic form have any
future; but this middle idiom, ‘neither fish nor foul’, in which I and most
other contemporary composers write – isn’t that something of an unnecessary
mediocrity, a ‘golden mean’, in which it is impossible to make oneself clear?84

The next year he confirmed his feelings towards Wagner in a letter to Bel’sky:

As for Wagner’s longueurs, all I can say is that I only see evidence of his god-
like self-importance; I can’t find any other god-like qualities. I like a work of
art to have artistic form, but in Wagner there is no form, or if there is, then it is
anti-artistic. I don’t want anything like this in my work.85

Thus Rimsky-Korsakov never really came to terms with Wagner properly. In the
end he both admired and despised him at the same time. On a visit to Vienna
in 1906, during which he saw Das Rheingold and Die Meistersinger, Rimsky-
Korsakov again wrote to his son:

You don’t admire Wagner as an author: neither do I, insofar as I know this side of
his work through Russian translations. Neither can I value him as a dramatist.86

He continued, however, by praising Wagner, albeit with caveats, as an opera

composer in general:

But he really is a great opera composer, although strictly speaking he has

renounced this title, and gives the impression that, for him, music needs simply

84
‘Не начинается ли вообще вырождение оперы, как художественной формы?
К старой оперн[ой] форме вернуться нельзя, вагнеровскую форму продолжать тоже
нельзя, а та средняя форма “ни два ни полтора”, в которой пишу я и большинство
современных авторах, не есть ли та никому ненужная посредственность золотая
середина, в которой нельзя быть ярким?’ ‘Iz neopublikovannïkh dokumentov pis’ma
k sïnu Andreyu’ [From the unpublished letters to his son Andrey] Sovetskaya muzïka 6
(1958), p. 70.
85
‘О длиннотах же Вагнера скажу, что в них вижу лишь его божественное
самоммнение, а других божественных качеств не усматриваю. Я люблю, чтобы
сочинение имело художественную форму, а у Вагнера формы нет, а если и есть,
то она антихудожественна. Не желайте таковой моему произведению.’ ‘“Postroyka
goroda Kitezha”: Iz perepiski N. A. Rimskogo-Korsakova s V. I. Bel’skim’ [‘Building
the city of Kitezh’: From the correspondence between N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov and V. I.
Bel’sky], Sovetskaya muzïka, 3 (1976), p. 102. Rimsky-Korsakov’s emphasis.
86
‘Ты не в восхищении от Вегнера, как от писателя: я тоже, поскольку знаю его
с этой стороны по русским переводам. Не могу им восхищаться и как драматургом.’
‘Iz neopublikovannïkh dokumentov pis’ma k sïnu Andreyu’ [From the unpublished
letters to his son Andrey] Sovetskaya muzïka 6 (1958), p. 70.
46 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

to be a constituent part of a general work of art, and that general work of art must
express high philosophical ideas, etc.87

For Rimsky-Korsakov, music was the primary element of opera, and neither
simply a slave to drama, nor even its equal partner, as explained in the prefaces to
many of his operas, and Wagner’s concept of Gesamtkunstwerk was tantamount
to a betrayal of this fundamental notion. He succinctly summarised his view of
Wagner’s theory in his ‘Vagner’ essay, stating that ‘before us is not a work of
two united art forms, not a music drama, but simply a dramatic literary work
with musical accompaniment.’88 This point is emphasised when, alongside
highlighting Wagner’s many shortcomings in the letter to his son quoted above,
Rimsky-Korsakov still had room to praise Wagner’s technical musical capacities
– the things that really mattered to him:

Wagner’s shortcomings are his interminable long-windedness and the paucity

of his melodies, motives and themes. Meistersinger is constructed from too
limited a number of motives, but the compositional working on these motives is
veritably astounding.89

Wagner, then, was something of an enigma to Rimsky-Korsakov for most of

his adult life. The early scepticism of the kuchka gave way to great admiration
following the production of Der Ring in St. Petersburg. As the turn of the century
approached, and particularly after his detailed scrutiny of Siegfried, renewed
enthusiasm soon led to serious doubts about the path Wagner had set out for his
followers. However, towards the end of his life, Rimsky-Korsakov could step back
from all this, and see both good and bad in Wagner, reflecting the ambivalence
towards the German composer that he held throughout his life, as shared by many
of his contemporaries.

87
‘Но действительно он велик как оперный композитор, хотя он собственно
говоря отрекался от этого звания и делал вид, что музыка для него нужна лишь как
составная часть общего произведения искусства, а общее произведения искусства
должен выражать собою великие философские идеи и.т.п.’ Ibid.
88
‘...перед нами не совокупное произведение двух искусств, не музыкальная
драма, а просто словесно-драматическое произведение с сопровождением музыки.’
Rimskiy-Korsakov, ‘Vagner: Sovokupnoye proizvedeniye dvukh iskusstv, ili muzykal’naya
drama’, p. 57.
89
‘Недостатки Вагнера – это его безмерная длина и скупость на мелодии,
мотивы и темы. Мейстерзингеры построены из слишком органиченного числа
мотивов, но композиторская работа над этим мотивами поистине изумительная.’
‘Iz neopublikovannïkh dokumentov pis’ma k sïnu Andreyu’, p. 70. Rimsky-Korsakov’s
emphasis.
 ‘The end of opera itself’ 47

Conclusions

Rimsky-Korsakov’s opinions on other composers, and in particular Wagner,

underwent significant changes over the course of his life, as can be seen from
the above survey. From the early intolerance and selective tastes of the Balakirev
circle, he developed a healthy scepticism, whilst still being capable of giving
praise where he considered it due. A general increase in regard for composers of
antiquity became evident in conjunction with Rimsky-Korsakov’s employment
at the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1871, and this signalled the broadening
of his independence from Balakirev’s influence. Acquaintance with Wagner’s
Ring at its 1888–89 premiere in St Petersburg was a watershed for Rimsky-
Korsakov and many other Russians, unleashing an enthusiasm for Wagnerian
instrumentation, harmonic innovation and the use of techniques like leitmotif in
such works as Mlada and Sadko, and the prelude-cantata Iz Gomera.
Although Rimsky-Korsakov underwent a period of intense stylistic re-
evaluation in the realm of opera around the turn of the century, turning his hand
to Realism à la Dargomïzhsky in Motsart i Sal’eri (1897), Verismo in Boyarïnya
Vera Sheloga [The Noblewoman Vera Sheloga, 1898] and a kind of Italian–
Meyerbeerian amalgam in Serviliya [Servilia, 1900–01],90 re-acquaintance with the
score of Siegfried in 1901 led to a revitalised interest in Wagner and his approach.
Evgeny Maksimovich Petrovsky, who supplied the initial libretto for Kashchey,
remarked to Findeyzen that Rimsky-Korsakov even had a portrait of Wagner on his
wall.91 In a sense, the compositional idiom of Kashchey was a continuation of the
experimentation of the turn-of-the-century phase, as Rimsky-Korsakov attempted to
reinvent his composition style and escape his kuchkist past once more. But now the
experiment was a focussed study of Wagnerian techniques. As Taruskin confirms,
Rimsky-Korsakov never quite assimilated Wagner into his musical language, and in
Kashchey at least, the techniques are adopted somewhat mechanically.92 But perhaps
more important was the impact that Wagner and his legacy had upon Rimsky-
Korsakov’s attitudes towards opera more generally, manifest after Kashchey in a
gradual increase in contempt for the more progressive composers of the west in
their role as heirs of Wagner – Richard Strauss, Vincent d’Indy and Gustav Mahler
coming in for particular disapproval. Had Rimsky‑Korsakov lived one more year

90
For more on the operas of this period of experimentation, see, among others,
Stephen Muir, ‘The Operas of N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov from 1897 to 1904’ (unpublished
PhD dissertation, University of Birmingham, 2000), and many parts of Frolova-Walker,
Russian Music and Nationalism from Glinka to Stalin.
91
See Andrey Nikolayevich Rimskiy-Korsakov, N. A. Rimskiy-Korsakov: zhizn′ i
tvorchestvo, vol. 5, p. 51. The portrait is still visible in its original place immediately above
Rimsky-Korsakov’s work desk in his study in the Muzey-kvartira [Museum apartment] at
the composer’s former residence in St Petersburg.
92
See Taruskin, ‘Chernomor to Kashchey: harmonic sorcery, or Stravinsky’s
“Angle”’, pp. 125, 128.
48 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

to witness the Expressionist outpourings of Schoenberg in 1909, he would almost

certainly have considered fully justified his view that Wagner would ultimately bring
about ‘the end of opera itself’.
 Chapter 3
How Russian was Wagner?
Russian Campaigns to Defend or
Destroy the German Composer during the
Great War (1914–1918)
Rebecca Mitchell

In 1913, on the eve of the Great War, the Russian symbolist writer Sergey Durïlin
(1877–1954) defended Richard Wagner as ‘the last German in whom the spirit of
music was the spirit of Christianity’.1 Over the previous decades, Durïlin argued,
the German people (narod) had failed to offer a sufficiently Christian basis for
Wagner’s creative work.2 As a result, Wagner’s true disciples were only to be found
in the Russian narod, whose inherent Christianity was uniquely suited to combine
with the German genius’s true creative brilliance. Like many educated Russians

1
‘В Вагнере в последнем немце дух музыки был духом христианским’,
Sergey Durïlin, Rikhard Vagner i Rossiya: o Vagnere i budushchikh putyakh iskusstva
[Wagner and Russia: about Wagner and the future paths of art] (Moscow, 1913), p. 13.
Durïlin was a Moscow literary scholar, editor and theater critic, active with the Russian
publisher Posrednik (from 1904) and later the symbolist publishing house Musaget (from
1910). In 1914, he graduated from the Archeological Institute. In the post-revolutionary
period, Durïlin remained active both as a professor and as a theater scholar. See Sergey
Durïlin, V svoyom uglu [In my own corner] (Moscow, 1991), pp. 11, 13; ‘Durïlin, Sergey
Nikolayevich,’ in G.B. Bernandt, I.M. Yampol’skiy and T.E. Kiseleva, Kto pisal o
muzïke: bio-bibliograficheskiy slovar’ muzïkal’nïkh kritikov i lits, pisavshikh o muzïke v
dorevolyutsionnoy Rossii i SSSR [Who wrote about music: bio-bibliographical dictionary
of musical critics and people writing on music in pre-revolutionary Russia and the USSR]
(2 vols, Moscow, 1971–89), vol. 1, p. 296; Anna Reznichenko, S.N. Durïlin i yego vremya
[S.N. Durïlin and his time] (Moscow, 2010).
2
The Russian term narod encompasses an entire constellation of meanings, including
ethnicity, nationality and the common people. For this reason, I have chosen to maintain
the original term as it appeared in contemporary discourse rather than select one particular
translation. On the historical development of the concepts of narod and narodnost’ and
their relation to political discourse, see Nathanial Knight, ‘Ethnicity, Nationality, and the
Masses: Narodnost’ and Modernity in Imperial Russia’, in David Hoffmann and Yanni
Kotsonis (eds), Russian Modernity: Politics, Knowledge, Practices (Basingstoke, 2000),
pp. 41–64.
50 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

who derided contemporary Germany for its ‘individuality’ and ‘materialism’,

Durïlin nevertheless found in Wagner a symbol of Russia’s future path.
The outbreak of war in 1914 seriously disrupted this imagined connection
between Wagner and Russia. The Russian press of the day repeatedly protested
alleged ‘German bestiality’ [немецкое зверство] and ‘German dominance’
[немецким засильем] in economic, political, social and cultural spheres and fueled
a widespread sense that the military conflict was the physical embodiment of two
fundamentally different cultural paths (German and Russian).3 Within this context,
the figure of Wagner emerged as a contested symbol, employed by both extremes
in an increasingly nationalistic discourse. How could Wagner, a German, have
anything to offer Russia? Did his music not embody ‘Germanness’ itself and all the
ills associated with it—militarism, individualism and secularism? Occasionally,
the same critic even found himself alternately praising and condemning both the
composer’s music and thought. So it was that, in the midst of the Great War, the
German composer himself became a contested field, repeatedly assaulted and
defended both by musicians and by the broader Russian intelligentsia.
By the early twentieth century, Wagnerism had seized the imaginations of
many imperial Russian musicians, writers and audience members. The number
of publications and performances devoted to Wagner increased substantially, and
Wagnerian themes were common in literature and art of the time.4 The year prior
to the outbreak of war (1913) marked the hundredth anniversary of the composer’s
birth and thirtieth anniversary of his death (1813–83), and was celebrated in the
Russian empire with a wide array of concert performances as well as published
reflections upon the German composer’s significance for Russia in particular.5 As
several musicologists and literary scholars have demonstrated, symbolist figures
such as Andrey Bely, Ellis (Lev Kobïlinsky) and Emil Medtner framed their own
lives as if they were themselves figures in a Wagnerian drama.6 To make sense of the
cultural significance Wagner had gained in late imperial Russia, these studies have

3
Eric Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign Against Enemy Aliens
During World War One (Cambridge, MA, 2003), pp. 11–30; Dietrich Beyrau, ‘Mortal
Embrace: Germans and (Soviet) Russians in the First Half of the 20th Century’, Kritika
10/3 (2009), pp. 423–39 (pp. 428–9).
4
On Wagner reception in the early twentieth century, see Rosamund Bartlett, Wagner
and Russia (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 59–116; Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, ‘Wagner and
Wagnerian Ideas in Russia’, in David C. Large and William Weber (eds), Wagnerism in
European Culture and Politics (Ithaca, 1984), pp. 198–245.
5
The thirtieth anniversary meant that, according to German law, all of Wagner’s
compositions were now in the public domain. See Yu[liy] E[ngel’], ‘O vagnerovskoy
literature’ [On Wagnerian literature], Russkiye vedomosti [Russian news] 36 (13 February
1913), p. 4.
6
See for instance Magnus Ljunggren, The Russian Mephisto: A Study of the Life and
Work of Emilii Medtner (Stockholm, 1994); Ada Steinberg, Word and Music in the Novels
of Andrey Bely (Cambridge, 1982); Simon Morrison, Russian Opera and the Symbolist
Movement (Berkeley, 2002); Bartlett, Wagner and Russia, pp. 117–218.
 How Russian was Wagner? 51

tended to focus primarily on personal biographies and creative output, offering

valuable insight into the creative world of these individuals. In her analysis of
Wagnerism in Russia and the Soviet Union, historian Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal
offers a valuable synthesis of three historical trends within which responses to
Wagner’s ideas and music can be placed (aesthetic–cultural, mystical–religious,
revolutionary).7 As a historian interested in questions of national and imperial
identity, I offer a temporally more focused analysis (1900–17), exploring how
Wagnerian symbolism was employed in the Russian press of the time. In such
a study, the figure of Wagner gains import not only as an influential cultural
figure, but also as a valuable lens through which to inspect and interpret political,
social and cultural change in the final years of the Russian empire. In particular,
Wagner’s assumed connection with German national identity (together with his
Russian admirers’ attempts to demonstrate his unique significance for Russia)
offers a new field upon which to investigate the increasingly exclusive style of
European nationalism that gained ground in the years leading up to the Great War.
The Wagnerian symbols which found the greatest resonance within Russian
society tied the composer to contemporary cultural and political concerns rather
than individual artists’ personal crises. Of particular interest to contemporaries
were questions of national identity and comparisons between the respective roles
of Germany and Russia in the modern world. While contemporary Germany was
often compared with the ‘pagan’ characters and imagery from Der Ring, Russia
and its future mission were regularly associated with the Christian hero in Parsifal.
The war sharpened these cultural associations, as Russian observers discussed,
debated and pondered how Russian Wagner truly was.
After exploring contending interpretations of Wagner as a symbol of either
‘German’ or ‘Russian’ culture in the years leading up to the Great War, this chapter
considers how military conflict exacerbated these pre-existing cultural stereotypes
connected to the German composer. In the end, Wagner proved an unwieldy
symbol, fitting comfortably into neither side of the exclusive nationalist discourse
of the war. Like many other figures and symbols from the multi-ethnic cultural
world of pre-war Europe, the fate of Wagner in Russia’s Great War demonstrates
the contradictions that emerged from the process of invention and myth-making
that accompanied the triumph of an exclusionary nationalist outlook in Europe. In
this sense, Russia’s great war over Wagner provides new insight into the complex
relationship between culture, national identity and political power during the
violent early decades of the twentieth century.

Wagner’s German Soul: Germany as Siegfried in the Russian Imagination

Rising nationalist sentiment throughout Europe in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries stimulated intense internal debates within Russian educated

7
Glatzer Rosenthal, ‘Wagner and Wagnerian Ideas in Russia’, pp. 198–245.
52 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

society about the role that Russian nationalism might play within the multi-ethnic
empire. Supporters of a more exclusionary form of Russian (russkiy) nationalism,
in which the Russian narod were envisioned as the dominant cultural force to
which other ethnic minorities were expected to assimilate (supported in part by the
Russification policies of the last two Tsars, Aleksandr III and Nikolay II), vied with
more liberal reformers who sought to envision an imperial Russian (rossiyskiy)
identity in which the unique cultural and linguistic aspects of various ethnic groups
were incorporated into a greater whole.8 Both sides of this debate tended, by and
large, to adopt a romantic image of national identity as an organic and inherent
attribute belonging to a specific, clearly defined group of people, and discussion of
differing ‘national’ characteristics was common within Russian educated society.9
This conversation developed as Prussia succeeded in politically unifying Germany
in 1871; for this reason, educated Russians found in Germany a useful foil through
which to discuss the relative merits of national identity, politically and culturally.
As one of Germany’s most influential contemporary composers, Wagner served as
a key symbol through which German (and by extension, Russian) national identity
was discussed in Russia.
Philosopher Vladimir Solov’yov (1853–1900) gave voice to two of the dominant
themes through which Wagner’s competing German and Russian identities were
interpreted in early twentieth-century Russia. In the first instance, he drew a sharp
distinction between national culture and nationalism. As Greg Gaut has argued,
Solov’yov actively condemned the growth of exclusionary forms of nationalism and
favored an image of empire (and national identity) that incorporated peoples from
multiple ethnic backgrounds.10 Within his analysis, Solov’yov employed Germany
as a symbol through which he could distinguish national identity (which he viewed
in a positive light) from nationalism (which he considered a negative influence).
For Solov’yov, the cultural products of Germany’s artists, philosophers and
musicians were national in basis and universal in significance (thereby benefitting
human society as a whole), but German political nationalism possessed only
negative attributes (thereby proving the deleterious effects of conservative forms

8
Greg Gaut, ‘Can a Christian be a Nationalist? Vladimir Solov’ev’s Critique of
Nationalism’, Slavic Review 57/1 (1998), pp. 77–94.
9
For classic assessments of nationalism as a modern, rather than organic phenomenon,
see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism, revised edition (New York, 1991); Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism
Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality, 2nd edition (Cambridge, 1990); Ernest Gellner,
Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY, 1983). On the impact of exclusive nationalist
sentiment in Russia during the Great War, see Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire.
10
Gaut, ‘Can a Christian be a Nationalist’, esp. pp. 79–91. On the limitations of
Solov’yov’s inclusive vision, see ibid., pp. 92–4, Susanna Soojung Lim, ‘Between Spiritual
Self and Other: Vladimir Solov’ev and the Question of East Asia’, Slavic Review 67/2
(2008), pp. 321–41.
 How Russian was Wagner? 53

of nationalist sentiment within the Russian empire).11 This differentiation between

German culture and German political aspirations provided a basis that allowed later
Russian commentators during the Great War to claim Wagner’s creative output for
Russia, while condemning what was viewed as unprovoked German militarism.
In his second and perhaps even more significant observation, Solov’yov
sought to associate the ruler of contemporary Germany with the Wagnerian
character of Siegfried. Shortly before his death in 1900, Solov’yov employed this
well-known comparison in his poem ‘The Dragon’. This work was written after
Kaiser Wilhelm II’s spontaneous 2 July 1900 address to his soldiers, who had
gathered for a punitive expedition to China in retaliation for the assassination of
the German envoy to Peking during the Boxer Rebellion. In the published version
of the text, the Kaiser explicitly contrasted the Christian culture of Germany with
the ‘heathen culture’ of China.12 Inspired by this imperial posturing, Solov’yov
dedicated his poem ‘To Siegfried’ (referring to Kaiser Wilhelm II). The text of the
poem celebrated the unification of the Christian cross with the might of the sword,
and envisioned Wilhelmine Germany as the forceful upholder of Christian values.
Wagner’s hero Siegfried (associated with the Kaiser personally, and with the
Christian mission of Europe more generally) was referred to in flattering terms:

Heir of the sword-bearing host!

You are true to the sign of the cross,
The fire of Christ is on your sword,
And your words are imminently holy.
[Наследник меченосной рати!
Ты верен знамени креста,
Христов огонь в твоем булате,
И речь грозящая свята.]13

The Kaiser’s public reaction to the Boxer Rebellion was similarly praised as the
recognition of Christian duty:

Before the mouth of the dragon

You understood that sword and cross were one.

11
V[yacheslav] Serbinenko, ‘The Russian Idea: Metaphysics, Ideology and History’,
in Madhavan K. Palat (ed.), Social Identities in Revolutionary Russia (New York, 2001),
pp. 1–17, esp. 11; Gaut, ‘Can a Christian be a Nationalist’, p. 83.
12
Ernst Johann (ed.), Reden des Kaisers: Ansprachen, Predigten und Trinksprüche
Wilhelms II (Munich, 1966), pp. 86–8, trans. Richard S. Levy at www.h-net.org/~german/
gtext/kaiserreich/china.html [accessed 30 July 2012]; Lim, ‘Between Spiritual Self and
Other’, p. 340; Gaut, ‘Can a Christian be a Nationalist’, p. 93.
13
V.S. Solov’yov, ‘Drakon’ [Dragon], Sobraniye sochineniy Vladimira Sergeyevicha
Solov’yeva [Collected works of Vladimir Sergeyevich Solov’yov] (10 vols, St. Petersburg,
1911–14; reprint edn with two additional volumes, Brussels, 1966–70), vol. 12, p. 97.
54 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

[Но перед пастню дракона

Ты понял: крест и меч – одно.]14

The symbol of Siegfried thus emerged as a way symbolically to distinguish

Christian Europe (embodied in Germany) from what Solov’yov viewed as the
pagan menace of Asia.15
When considered in relation to the plot of Der Ring, Solov’yov’s choice
of Siegfried as a conquering hero sallying forth to defend Christian values can
appear somewhat anachronistic. Loosely based upon Norse sagas and the epic
poem the Nibelungenlied, the plot, characters and imagery of the cycle presented
pre-Christian motifs.16 Perhaps for this reason, Solov’yov’s Christianized version
of Siegfried failed to enter general use.17 Nevertheless, the association between
the characters from Wagner’s Ring and contemporary Germany soon became
commonplace in Russian public discourse. Rather than just the Kaiser, Russian
commentators envisioned Siegfried as a reference to German society as a whole;
whether employed positively or negatively, Siegfried and Der Ring in general thus
came to serve as a popular evocation of ‘German’ cultural identity.
The conflation of Wagner, Der Ring and German culture found particularly
clear expression in the late imperial publications spearheaded by writer, journal
editor and music critic Emil Medtner.18 A devoted Germanophile, Wagnerian and
influential figure in the Russian symbolist movement, Medtner sought to counter
Solov’yov’s critique of German nationalism with the assertion that ‘Germanism’
was not a negative, ‘narrow nationalism’ [узко национальным] in essence, but
an embodiment of universal values, and was therefore capable of ‘fertilizing
the musical creation of related nations’ [способным оплодотворить звуковое
творчество родственных народов].19 One did not have to be German, Medtner

14
Ibid.
15
Solov’yov later doubted his own assessment of the situation. See Lim, ‘Between
Spiritual Self and Other’, p. 340.
16
On the textual sources for Wagner’s Ring, see Elizabeth Magee, Richard Wagner
and the Nibelungs (Oxford, 1990).
17
Siegfried and Der Ring were, however, employed by symbolist writers like
Aleksandr Blok and Andrey Bely as symbols for revolutionary social change in the
aftermath of the 1905 and 1917 revolutions. See Glatzer Rosenthal, ‘Wagnerism in Russia’,
pp. 227–34.
18
In addition to his activities as a literary editor and music critic, Emil Medtner was
connected to the musical community of late imperial Russia through his younger brother,
Nikolay Medtner (1880–1951), an active composer and pianist of the period.
19
Vol’fing [Emil Medtner], ‘Invektivï na muzïkal’nuyu sovremennost’’ [Invective on
contemporary music], Trudï i dni [Works and days] 2 (1912), pp. 29–45, here p. 29. While
supporting the idea that Russian culture would be enriched by the influence of German
culture (including Wagner), Emil Medtner also shared the anti-Semitic prejudices of the
German composer, arguing that Jews should be excluded from Russian cultural life. See
Vol’fing [Emil Medtner], Modernizm i muzïka: stat’i kriticheskiya i polemicheskiya, 1907–
 How Russian was Wagner? 55

asserted, in order to acknowledge German musical hegemony from Bach to

Wagner, which should serve as the basis for the further musical development of
all nations, including Russia.20 In order to offer what he considered a balanced
assessment of Wagner’s current relevance, Medtner ran a recurring column in his
journal Trudï i dni [Work and days] devoted to uncovering Wagner’s import for
contemporary Russian readers.21 Here Wagner’s Ring, particularly the figures of
Siegfried and Wotan, were claimed to demonstrate the composer’s most perfect
‘myth-creating element’ [мифотворящую стихию] in which the spirit of the
German narod had found its voice.22 In these pro-German assessments, Siegfried
in particular emerged as a positive figure who embodied Germany’s cultural
traditions and continuing strength, which in turn might serve as a guide for Russia.
In the increasingly hostile atmosphere leading to Russian–German military
conflict in 1914, the image of Siegfried (along with other characters from Der
Ring) began to take on a more sinister historical role. In his 1913 poem ‘The
Shield of the Nibelungs’, published in the journal Novoye zveno [New link],
Mikhail Balyasny decried Germany for its increasingly militant stance towards
Russia. Contemporary Germany, suggested Balyasny, had treacherously sought to
control the city of Constantinople (Tsar’grad), a city to which Russia was deeply
connected both historically and spiritually.23 To combat this latter-day ‘Siegfried’
(used in reference to contemporary German politics, which, Balyasny suggested,
had sought to seize control of Constantinople from Russia), he employed imagery
borrowed from Russian epic tales (bïlinï), writing dramatically of Russia’s
preparations for coming conflict:

Prepare, glorious druzhina

Tsar and the people of our homeland Rus’
With a mighty giant hand
Let us tear away the shield of Siegfried!

1911 [Modernism and music: critical and polemical articles, 1907–1911] (Moscow, 1912),
pp. 87–122; Rosenthal, ‘Wagnerism in Russia’, pp. 223–5.
20
Vol’fing [Emil Medtner], ‘Sixtus Beckmesser Redivivus: etyud o “novoy muzïke”’
[Sixtus Beckmesser Redivivus: study on ‘New Music’], Zolotoye runo [The golden fleece]
2 (1907), pp. 65–9.
21
Vol’fing [Emil Medtner], ‘Vagneriana: nabroski k kommentariyu’[Wagneriana:
sketches for a commentary], Trudï i dni 4–5 (1912), pp. 23–37.
22
Ibid., p. 29; ‘Vagneriana: Nabroski k kommentariiu’, Trudy i dni no. 6 (1912): pp.
27–48, here 38.
23
The emphasis on the importance of Constantinople for Russian culture and Russia’s
historical claims to it were regular themes during the Great War. See for instance Pyotr Struve,
‘Velikaya Rossiya i svyataya rus’’ [Great Russia and holy Rus’], Russkaya mïsl’ [Russian
thought] 12 (1914), pp. 176–80; Kn. Sergey Gagarin, ‘Konstantinopol’skiye prolivï’ [The
Straits of Constantinople], Russkaya mïsl’ 5 (1915), pp. 43–62. This celebration of Russia’s
historical link with Constantinople served as a means through which to rationalize Russia’s
involvement in war while denigrating German aims.
56 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

[Готовься, славная дружина, –

Царь и народ Руси родной!
Рукой мощной исполина
Зигфридов щит сорви долой!]24

As the clouds of war gathered, Wagner and his operatic characters took on an
increasingly negative aura, serving as a convenient reference to the imagined
culture and mentality of the German enemy.

Wagner’s Russian Soul: Parsifal as Russia’s Christian Mission

Echoing the same sentiments expressed by Durïlin in this chapter’s opening

vignette, music critic Yuly Engel’ concluded in 1913 that the greatest contemporary
followers of Wagner were not in his native Germany, but in Russia.25 Writing for the
larger readership of the newspaper Russkiye vedomosti [Russian news], he called
for greater intellectual engagement with Russia’s love affair with Wagner; namely,
he called for the appearance of specifically Russian literature about Wagner,
distinct from German nationalist interpretations of the composer. He argued that
‘for us, most important of all in this genius is his general humanness, and not his
specifically German side, which is usually brought to the forefront in German
books on Wagner’.26 Engel’s call for Russian literature on Wagner demonstrates
a growing interest in the composer’s symbolic role, not just for contemporary
European society in general, but for Russia in particular. December 1913 marked
the first official performance of Wagner’s final opera Parsifal in Russia (following
the lifting of copyright), and this work attracted particular attention even as political
tensions between the German and Russian governments grew.27 For many Russian
commentators, Parsifal seemed to hold the greatest significance for contemporary
Russia. It was, in short, Wagner’s most ‘Russian’ work.

24
Mikhail Balyasny, ‘Nibelungov shchit’ [Shield of the Nibelungs], Novoye zveno
[New link] 2 (1913), p. 63.
25
Yu[liy] [Engel’], ‘Pamyati Vagnera’ [In memory of Wagner], Russkiye vedomosti
106 (1913), p. 4. See also K[onstantin] Eiges, ‘Rikhard Vagner i yego khudozhestvennoye
reformatorstvo’ [Richard Wagner and his artistic reforms], Russkaya mïsl’ 6 (1913), pp.
56–68 (p. 60).
26
‘Для нас в этом гений важнее всего его общечеловеческая, а не специфически-
немецкая сторона, обыкновенно выдвигаемая на первый план немецкими книгами о
Вагнере.’ E[ngel’], ‘O vagnerovskoy literature’, p. 4.
27
The 30-year copyright on Parsifal ended on 31/19 December 1913. The opera was
first performed in Russian by Aleksandr Sheremet’yev’s concert society on 21 December
1913 in the Hermitage Theatre in front of an audience that included the imperial family, the
diplomatic corps, State Duma representatives and senior government officials. At least five
published guides appeared at the same time. See Bartlett, Wagner and Russia, pp. 112–13.
 How Russian was Wagner? 57

While Der Ring had drawn upon Germanic and Norse mythology, thereby linking
it with pagan religious imagery, Parsifal was perceived to be deeply Christian in its
content and message.28 Loosely based upon Wolfram von Eschenbach’s thirteenth-
century epic poem Parzival, the plot of both poem and musical work follow the
Arthurian knight Parsifal’s quest for the Holy Grail, emphasizing the values of
virtue, compassion and redemption. For Russian commentators, this mystical
reinterpretation of Christian values struck a chord: such values seemed sorely lacking
in modern society and tied in well with a shared ideal of the Russian soul popularized
by Fyodor Dostoevsky (itself underpinning a broader religious renaissance that
swept Russian educated society in the early twentieth century).29 In his influential
‘Address on Pushkin’, delivered at the unveiling of the Pushkin Monument in
Moscow in 1880, Dostoevsky had envisioned the future task of the Russian nation as
synthesizing the deeply Christian values of the narod with universal (i.e., European)
ideals. Only Russia, Dostoevsky had argued, possessed the ability

to seek finally to reconcile all European controversies, to show the solution

of European anguish in our all-humanitarian and all-unifying Russian soil, to
embrace in it with brotherly love all our brethren, and finally, perhaps, to utter
the ultimate word of great, universal harmony, of the brotherly accord of all
nations abiding by the law of Christ’s Gospel!’30

This emphasis on the uniquely Christian basis of the Russian narod, in combination
with the subject matter of Wagner’s last opera, provided the essential basis for
later Russian commentators, who recognized in Wagner’s art uniquely Russian
attributes.

28
On the non-orthodox nature of Christian imagery in Parsifal, see William Kinderman,
‘Introduction: The Challenge of Wagner’s Parsifal’, and Mary A. Cicora, ‘Medievalism and
Metaphysics: The Literary Background of Parsifal’, in William Kinderman and Katherine
R. Syer (eds), A Companion to Wagner’s Parsifal (Rochester and Woodbridge, 2005), pp.
1–28 and 29–53.
29
On the religious renaissance of the early twentieth century in Russia and its sources
of inspiration, see for instance Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal and Martha Bohachevsky-
Chomiak (eds), A Revolution of the Spirit: Crisis of Value in Russia, 1890–1924 (New
York, 1990); Judith Deutsch Kornblatt and Richard F. Gustafson (eds), Russian Religious
Thought (Madison, 1996), esp. pp. 3–21; P.P. Gaidenko, Vladimir Solov’yev i filosofiya
Serebryanogo veka [Vladimir Solov’yov and Silver Age philosophy] (Moscow, 2001). Two
of the classic works on this topic (in Russian and English) are Nikolay Berdyaev, Russkaya
ideya: osnovnïye problemï russkoy mïsli XIX veka i nachala XX veka [The Russian idea:
foundational problems of Russian thought in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries]
(Moscow, 2000), and Nikolay Zernov, The Russian Religious Renaissance of the XX
Century (London, 1963).
30
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, ‘Pushkin: A Sketch’, in Marc Raeff, Russian Intellectual
History: An Anthology (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1988), pp. 288–300 (p. 300).
58 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

The importance of Wagner’s Parsifal for contemporary society was

highlighted for readers of Emil Medtner’s journal Trudï i dni in early 1913, with
the publication of a lengthy article by the symbolist poet Ellis. Rejecting Friedrich
Nietzsche’s famous dismissal of Wagner’s final work, Ellis offered a detailed
symbolic analysis of Wagner’s version of the Grail legend. He argued that, in
Parsifal, Wagner had discovered the only true path forward for artistic expression:
the merging of religion and art into a ‘Christian mystery’ [христианской
мистерии] that symbolically re-enacted the ‘one true mystery’ [единой, реальной
мистерии] of Golgotha.31 Parsifal, claimed Ellis, marked the only modern
attempt at such a synthesis and was, therefore, a transitional work from mere art
towards spiritual insight into higher reality. Wagner’s earlier characters, such as
Siegfried, represented earlier phases in human spiritual development; Parsifal, in
contrast, was the Christian knight who embodied the current historical age. The
significance of Parsifal, Ellis argued, lay in Wagner’s unconscious envisioning
of hope for salvation from the amoral tendencies of modernity. While such ideas
might well have seemed ‘incomprehensible and strange’ [непонятно и странно]
in the 1880s when Parsifal was written, it now captured the ‘resurrecting Christian
self-consciousness’ [возрождающегося христианского самосознания] that was
beginning to blossom throughout Europe.32
The poet Marietta Shaginyan seconded Ellis’s interpretation of both Der Ring and
Parsifal in a 1914 article published in Trudï i dni. Pondering the different philosophical
implications of the terms ‘end’ [конeц] and ‘completion’ [окончание], Shaginyan
drew a connection between ‘end’ and death, and the process of ‘completion’ and
resurrection. She associated ‘completion’ with the ending of individual identity,
seeing in it the ‘transition from subject to object’ [переход субъекта в объект].
Thus, she concluded that, while ‘Siegfried leads Wotan to the end’ [Зигфрид
ведет Вотана к концу], in contrast, ‘Parsifal will lead [Wotan], already re-formed
and resurrected not as a pagan god, but as a Christian shepherd, to completion’
[Парсифаль приводит его, уже преображенного и во крещении не языческого
бога, а христианского пастыря, к окончанию].33 Parsifal demonstrated Wagner’s
greater spiritual growth beyond the limitations of Der Ring, in which the struggle
between power and love could end only with the death of the gods; in his final work,
Wagner had recognized the redemptive power of the Christian myth itself.34

31
Ellis [Lev Kobïlinskiy], ‘Parsifal Rikharda Vagnera’ [Richard Wagner’s Parsifal],
Trudï i dni 1–2 (1913), pp. 24–53 (p. 34).
32
Ibid., pp. 28, 40, 52.
33
Marietta Shaginyan, ‘O “kontse” i “okonchanii”: neskol’ko mïsley po povodu
trilogii’ [On ‘Ending’ and ‘Completion’: some thoughts on the trilogy], Trudï i dni 7 (1914),
pp. 53–57.
34
For additional reactions to Parsifal in the Russian press, see for instance I. Ashkinazi,
‘Teatr Vagnera’ [Wagner’s theatre], Obrazovaniye [Education] 3 (1909), pp. 101–16; V.
Karatïgin, ‘Parsifal v S. Peterburge’ [Parsifal in St. Petersburg], Russkaya mïsl’ 4 (1914),
pp. 20–25; ‘Pervaya postanovka Parsifalia v Bayreyte’ [The first production of Parsifal in
 How Russian was Wagner? 59

Within these mystical readings of Wagner’s Parsifal, national identity received

only minor attention. While acknowledging that any myth was deeply rooted in
national folk tradition, Ellis was most interested in the failure of contemporary art,
which celebrated the ‘passing and transparent values’ [призрачных и преходящих
ценностей] popular in modern life.35 Similarly, Shaginyan emphasized the
historical evolution of Wagner’s ideas without specific connection to contemporary
Russia. Nevertheless, an implicit relation between Wagner’s Christian rebirth and
popular ideas about the ‘Russian soul’ among Russian intellectuals informed the
interpretations of both authors. Other Russian commentators made such implicit
assumptions explicit.
Developing his own idea of a unique connection between Wagner and Russia
in Russkiye vedomosti, A. Gornfel’d drew a direct comparison between Wagner
and Dostoevsky. The fundamentally Christian orientation of both artists, Gornfel’d
argued, was apparent through a comparison of each man’s final work – Parsifal and
The Brothers Karamazov. The similarities Gornfel’d highlighted included a shared
focus on Christian rebirth as the basic idea underpinning the work, marked by an
emphasis on the values of love, purity, compassion and humility. In the characters
of both Parsifal and Alyosha, Gornfel’d identified a sharp critique of the modern
focus on individualism. Finally, he argued, though both men were unquestionably
nationalists, each demonstrated the need for a reconsideration of national traditions,
giving them an important place within universal human culture.36
Given Wagner’s uniquely Christian vision in Parsifal and Russia’s vaunted
‘Christian’ identity, it is not surprising that several Russian contemporaries
reached the conclusion that Russians would appreciate the essence of Wagnerian
art more than any other nation. Such an argument served as the basis of Viktor
Kolomiytsov’s 1913 study of Wagner’s significance for Russia.37 However, the
specific emphasis on Wagner’s Parsifal, together with its connection with Russia’s
spiritual calling, found its most extended argument in Sergey Durïlin’s book Vagner
i Rossiya [Wagner and Russia]. As already noted, the general worldview and
assumptions from which Durïlin began his analysis were similar to the symbolist

Bayreuth], Muzïka [Music] 163 (4 January 1914), pp. 14–16, 24–5; E. Petrovskiy, ‘Posle
Parsifalya’ [After Parsifal], Muzïka 175 (29 March 1914), pp. 263–8; L. Saminskiy, ‘Posle
i po povodu Kitezha’’ [After and about Kitezh], Muzïka 217 (4 April 1915), pp. 217–20.
Rosenthal also notes the special emphasis placed on Parsifal. See Glatzer Rosenthal,
‘Wagnerism in Russia’, pp. 212–14.
35
Ellis, ‘Parsifal’, p. 28.
36
A. Gornfel’d, ‘Vagner i Dostoyevskiy (K stoletiyu so dnya rozhdeniya Rikharda
Vagnera)’ [Wagner and Dostoevsky (on the 100th anniversary of Richard Wagner’s birth)],
Russkiye vedomosti 114 (1913), p. 2.
37
V. Kolomiytsov, ‘Rikhard Vagner i muzïkal’naya drama v Rossii’ [Richard Wagner
and musical drama in Russia], Muzïkal’nïy kalendar’ na 1913 god [Musical calendar for
1913] (St. Petersburg, 1913), p. viii. Cited in Bartlett, Wagner and Russia, pp. 111–12.
Kolomiytsov argued that Russia and Germany had many ‘spiritual features’ in common.
60 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

ideas expressed by Ellis, Shaginyan and others. He claimed that the purpose of
art in contemporary society was the creation of new ‘myths’ through which to
bring meaning to human existence. The ravages of modernity on human culture
required the rebirth of Christianity, which would reawaken a lost sense of unity and
purpose that had been lost in the contemporary age.38 In Durïlin’s interpretation,
the German composer’s unique importance came from his ability to root his myth-
creation in the narod rather than merely in his own person.39 Building upon an
earlier argument voiced by symbolist Vyacheslav Ivanov concerning the division
between the narod and the artist-genius in contemporary society (a division which
could only be overcome through the creation of new myths), Durïlin argued that
the true artist drew inspiration from the myths of the narod, which he reworked
and returned to the people in a new form.40 It was only through mutual interchange
that an artist could ‘free oneself from the contemporary spirit because only the
narod is eternally innocent’.41 No matter how great the individual artist, he was
dependent upon the myth-creating potential of the narod from which he sprang.
This mutual dependence between the genius and the narod spelled Wagner’s
ultimate failure. Wagner ‘could not give the strength and wholeness [of myths]
to the German people of the nineteenth century, just as he could not himself
receive from [the German narod] his own predisposition, his own predestination
to that wholeness, strength and unity’.42 The reason for this disconnect, Durïlin
claimed, was Germany’s loss of its Christian foundation. Contemporary Germany
embodied the individualism and divided nature of modern European society.
While earlier German music (Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven) had
been created on a Christian foundation, after Wagner’s death Durïlin contended
that Germany had ‘enter[ed] into a period of musical decline and broke with
its tradition of religious–musical inspiration’. The new generation of German
composers (Richard Strauss, Anton Bruckner, Max Reger) demonstrated the
divisive, non-Christian orientation of contemporary German culture. This new
German narod ‘could not be placed in living connection with the great religious–

38
Thus, Durïlin called for ‘Symbolism as an artistic method, myth-creation as the
fruit of art and religion as the living creative spirit of art’. See Durïlin, Vagner i Rossiya,
p. 19.
39
Durïlin argued that it was this aspect that differentiated Wagner from the earlier
Romantics. See Ibid., p. 22.
40
‘Ibid., pp. 7–8. Durïlin’s choice of words (‘Poet i chern’’) is a direct evocation of
symbolist Vyacheslav Ivanov’s earlier article by the same name. See Vyacheslav Ivanov, Po
zvyozdam [By the stars] (St. Petersburg, 1909), pp. 33–42.
41
‘Но освободиться от современной души можно только прикоснувшись к
народной душе или, точнее, возсоединившись с ней—потому что вечно-невинен
только народ.’ Durïlin, Vagner i Rossiya, p. 21.
42
‘Этой силы и цельности Вагнер не мог дать немецкому народу XIX ст., как
не мог и сам от него получить личного своего предрасположения, предназначаения к
этой цельности, силе и единству.’ Ibid., p. 12.
 How Russian was Wagner? 61

musical spirit and Christian soul that great German music possesses’.43 While
Wagner had succeeded in founding a pagan myth in the figure of Siegfried,
his attempt to forge a Christian myth with Parsifal was a failure. This was not
a failure on the part of Wagner, but of the German narod who proved unable
to offer a Christian basis for the type of myth-creation that the composer had
envisioned:

Siegfried, not knowing fear, not knowing sin, a child of the forest, a wonderful
beast beyond sin, was the universally accepted, perfect and expected form of
mythic thought of the victorious German narod. This is where Wagner’s poetry
was truly heard not by a rabble, but by a sympathetic and unanimous narod.…
Siegfried is the most perfect pagan form in Wagner’s art.…On the night [of
the performance of] Siegfried, Bayreuth was a temple of the Mystery that the
German narod most needs and the only one [they] now recognize.44

Wagner’s German ‘mystery’, embodied in the figure of Siegfried, demonstrated

the militaristic and fundamentally anti-Christian focus of the German narod in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Lacking a truly Christian cultural
basis or understanding, Durïlin argued, they proved themselves unable to respond
to the Christian ‘mystery’ of Parsifal.45
In contrast, Durïlin saw in Parsifal the traces of a true Christian ‘mystery’, a task
that Wagner had striven toward but failed to achieve. The ultimate accomplishment
of such a work was, in Durïlin’s mind, a specifically Russian task:

There is one point that is most important for Wagner and us, in which no one is
closer to him than we are. This is our unquenchable, growing thirst for religious
art, the national (narodnoye) Russian and Christian mythic thought that is true to
this day. It is the longing for a united Christian world-view that never leaves us
[and] which is uncovered in life, in thoughts, in art. Here it is our Russian right

43
‘Германия, вступив в полосу музыкального упадка, вместе с тем разорвала
с преемственностью религиозно-музыкальных вдохновений, ибо ни творчество Р.
Штрауса, ни Брукнера, ни органная религиозная стилизация Регера, не могут быть
поставлены в живую связь с великими выявлениями религиозно-музыкального духа
и христианской души германского народа у великих немецкой музыки.’ Ibid., p. 13.
44
‘Зигфрид, не знающий страха, не ведающий греха, лесное дитя, великолепный
внегрешный зверь, явился завершенным, чаянным, всеми принятым образом
мифомышления победоносного германского народа. Вот где, действительно,
поэту Вагнера внимала не чернь, но сочувствующий и единомыслящий народ….
Зигфрид же есть и совершеннейший языческий образ в художестве Вагнера –
совершенный музыкально, поэтически, пластически, драматически…. Байрейт в
вечера “Зигфрида”—храмина нужнейшей и единой признаваемой ныне германским
народом мистерии.’ Ibid., pp. 14–15.
45
Ibid., pp. 12–13.
62 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

to think and speak of Wagner, here the indissolubility of the connection of the
words Wagner and Russia is comprehensible.46

Durïlin cited the myth of the city of Kitezh as a specific example of the Russian
narod’s deeply Christian view of the world. He suggested that this particular myth
was now ripe for artistic development by a Russian composer who would succeed
where Wagner had failed, creating a true Christian and folk ‘mystery’.47 In this way,
Parsifal (and Wagner) symbolized a tragic connecting link: as a German, Wagner
was unable to complete the Christian mystery required to overcome the negative
effects of modern life; nevertheless, as a cultural visionary, his final work had laid
the path that Russian culture must follow. Though not a Russian himself, his creative
work (specifically Parsifal) could nevertheless be claimed as part of Russia’s cultural
heritage.
Durïlin’s interpretation of Wagner, Russian and German cultures found
supporters within the Russian musical community. The reviewer B.P. observed
that, in his recent book, Durïlin had attempted to shed light upon the ‘“internal
religious striving”, that ever more broadly and notably seizes and unites the
more sensitive circles of Russian society at all levels now: from the true “narod”
to the heights of the intelligentsia’.48 Acknowledging the existence of a clear
cultural difference between Germany and Russia, the reviewer concluded that
Durïlin’s greatest service to his Russian readers was not just his explication of
Wagner’s symbolic significance for Russians, but also his refusal to be distracted
by the ‘delights of the Grail on the soul of a Russian searcher’ [чары Граля над
душой русского искателя]. Rather than being carried away by the appeal that
such a story held, B.P. insisted that the true Russian follower of Wagner should
(as Durïlin had argued) adopt the myth of the city of Kitezh rather than the Grail
as the basis for their own Christian mystery. In conclusion, the critic wrote, ‘this
[book] is not simply a characteristic symptom of our age, but a joyful harbinger
of the current renewal of Russian artistic thought, its return to the bosom of folk-

46
‘Но есть одно, самое важное для Вагнера и нас, в чем никто не ближе к нему, чем
мы: это – неутоленная, растущая наша жажда религиозного искусства, это – народное
русское и действенное доныне христианское мифомышление, это – непокидающая
нас никогда тоска по христианскому единому мироощущению, раскрываемому в
жизни, мысли, искусстве. Здесь – наше русское право думать и говорить о Вагнере,
здесь мыслимо и нерасторжимо сочетание слов: Вагнер—и Россия.’ Ibid.
47
Durïlin argued that Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera based on the legend had been the
only attempt thus far by a composer to combine the Russian folk and Christian tradition,
but that the composer had not truly understood the mission that lay ahead, and thus failed
to become the ‘artist myth-creator’ that Russia needed. Ibid., p. 25.
48
‘“внутренним религиозным устремлением”, которое все шире и
знаменательнее охватывает и объединяет теперь наиболее чуткие круги русского
общества во всех его слоях: от подлинного “народа” до верхов интеллигенции.’
B.P. [no title], Muzïka 187 (1914), pp. 417–18. On the impact of Durïlin’s book, see also
[anonymous], ‘Parsifal’, Muzïka 172 (1914), pp. 223–4.
 How Russian was Wagner? 63

religious art, remaining specifically on Russian earth in a world of creations of

exceptional beauty and feeling’.49
In January 1914, just months before the outbreak of war, Eduard Stark
further contributed to the aura surrounding Parsifal, by contrasting the
‘destructive’ tendencies of the emerging futurist movement in Russia with the
unique achievements of Wagner’s Parsifal. Since the German composer’s final
masterpiece, argued Stark, ‘not a single composer has managed to create anything
nearly equal to it’.50 Only Rimsky-Korsakov, suggested Stark (with a nod to
Durïlin), had even demonstrated similar leanings in Russia. While Durïlin argued
that Russia was ripe for the appearance of a composer to carry on Wagner’s mission
of creating a truly Christian art, Stark proved himself to be far more skeptical.
Citing both ‘social and spiritual’ [светской и духовной] censorship, Stark argued
that, until the Russian Orthodox Church changed its view on theater, there was no
reason ‘for us even to dream of any victorious, sanctified performances, though
they might directly sanctify the soul, awakening love and charity, calling forth
goodness and brotherhood between peoples’.51 Nevertheless, he saw in Wagner’s
Parsifal evidence that ‘a theater of great and eternal symbols’ [театр великих и
вечных символов] was possible. He praised Wagner’s dream of making Parsifal
a free performance, thereby ‘purifying it of the final sign of the greatest of earthly
sins’ [очистить их от последного признака величайшей из земных сует]
(monetary gain) and mourned that the recent performance at Moscow’s Narodnïy
dom [People’s house] had charged spectators for attending the performance. In

49
‘Она—не только характерный симптом нашего времени, но и радсотный
предвестник грядущего обновления русской художественной мысли, ее возвращения
в лоно народно-религиозного искусства, именно на русской земле оставившего миру
создания исключительной красоты и проникновенности.’ B.P. [no title], pp. 417–18.
50
‘ни один композитор не удосужился создать ничего приблизительно ему
равного.’ Eduard Stark, ‘Teatr-khram’ [Theatre-temple], Novoye zveno 3 (1914), pp. 90–
91. This metaphysical interpretation of Wagner was not universally embraced. Music critic
Konstantin Eiges rejected such spiritual claims for the composer, dismissing Wagner’s
musical aesthetics as a ‘philosophy of action upon the listener’ rather than a ‘process of
creation’. The ‘process of creation’ to which Eiges referred was the moment of higher
mystical experience, through which (he argued) an artist transcended the lower, physical
realm. By merely ‘acting’ upon the listener, Wagner’s music thus lacked higher spiritual
insight. See Eiges, ‘Rikhard Vagner i yego khudozhestvennoye reformatorstvo’, pp. 66–8.
On Eiges’ mystical interpretation of music, see Rebecca Mitchell, ‘Nietzsche’s Orphans:
Music and the Search for Unity in Revolutionary Russia’ (unpublished PhD dissertation,
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 2011), pp. 105–14; Rebecca Mitchell, ‘In
Search of Orpheus: Music and Irrationality in Late Imperial Russia, 1905–17’, in Julia
Mannherz (ed.), Irratsional’noe v russkoy istorii [The irrational in Russian history]
(forthcoming: Moscow, 2014)
51
‘Нечего нам и мечтать ни о каких торжественных освящающих представлениях,
хотя бы они и впрям освящали душу, будили любовь и милосердие, призывали к
добру, к братству между народами.’ Stark, ‘Teatr-khram’, pp. 90–91.
64 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

contrast to contemporary theatrical practice, Stark saw in Wagner’s Parsifal a

symbol of the future theater to be established, ‘a mystery, cleansing the soul of the
audience member with the light of god-bearing ideas’ [мистерию, очищающую
душу зрителя светом богоносных идей].52
To varying degrees, each of these commentators connected the Christian
mystery contained in Parsifal with contemporary Russia. While authors like
Ellis and Shaginyan left the immediate connection with Russia implicit, the
underlying connection between the Russian narod as ‘god-bearers’ famously
popularized by Dostoevsky lay close to the surface. Other commentators made
this connection explicit. With the outbreak of war in 1914, however, the divisions
between Wagner’s German and Russian aspects found themselves embroiled in
military conflict.

Interpreting Wagner in the Great War

With the outbreak of war in 1914, the connection between music, cultural
expression and patriotism was even more heatedly discussed in the Russian
periodical press.53 In literary, philosophical and musical journals, as well as in
the general newspapers of the day, a common differentiation emerged between
acceptable cultural products from past German artists and composers (associated
with universal cultural achievements of earlier generations) and recent works that,
it was argued, supported a militaristic, secular search for world domination. While
Russians might continue to draw upon the cultural products of an earlier, cultured
Germany, contemporary works were suspected of pollution with militaristic,
‘Prussian’ values.54 Moreover, Russian intellectuals argued ever more stridently
for an exclusionary interpretation of Russian national culture as the basis upon
which the Russian empire should function.55 The position of Wagner within this
dichotomy was hotly contested, as Russian commentators struggled to determine
whether the ‘German’ or ‘Russian’ aspect of Wagner was predominant. Despite the
observance of a general ban on Wagner’s music, the composer and his operas thus
featured regularly in public discourse in the early months of the war.56
In a public address marking the anniversary of Vladimir Solov’yov, liberal
philosopher Evgeny Trubetskoy turned to Wagner’s music in order to define the

52
Ibid.
53
Rebecca Mitchell, ‘Music and Russian Identity in the Twilight of Empire’, in
Murray Frame, Boris Kolonitskii, Steven Marks and Melissa Stockdale (eds), The Cultural
History of Russia in the Great War and Revolution, 1914–1922 (forthcoming).
54
On the differentiation between ‘German’ culture and ‘Prussian’ militarism in the
Russian press, see ibid.
55
See, for instance, the articles published in the December 1914 issue of Russkaya
mïsl’, most of which offer variants of this argument.
56
Bartlett, Wagner and Russia, p. 71.
 How Russian was Wagner? 65

militarism of modern Germany.57 He found in Der Ring an allegorical embodiment

of militaristic ‘Prussianism’ that was embraced by many Russian contemporaries.58
Despite this seemingly negative interpretation of the composer, however, Trubetskoy
was careful to differentiate between Wagner the artist and the symbolic import of his
work. For Trubetskoy, Wagner remained a visionary, and his Ring was a prescient
warning to all countries of the dangers of being carried away with dreams of world
hegemony; modern Germany had succumbed to the very weakness that Wagner’s
opera cycle had cautioned against. The greatest challenge now facing Russia,
Trubetskoy argued, was not the military defeat of Germany (an outcome of which
he had little doubt), but to heed Wagner’s admonition where Germany had failed—
Russia needed to overcome the same tendency towards national pride and desire for
world domination to which Germany had succumbed. In this interpretation, Wagner
maintained a preeminent position as a messenger warning against the dangers of
modernity to all nations. Russia, Trubetskoy hoped, would prove more responsive to
Wagner’s message than Germany had proven to be.59
While Trubetskoy sought to make a distinction between Wagner’s creative
output and the militaristic values of modern Germany, not all commentators were so
generous toward the German composer. For some, Wagner served as a convenient
symbol of all German culture, which was now perceived as fundamentally opposed
to Russian culture. While Solov’yov had cast the figure of Siegfried in a positive
light as the defender of Christianity against pagans (symbolizing Wilhelm II), by
1914 commentators explicitly identified Siegfried not with the Kaiser, but with
all of German culture. Moreover, Siegfried with his sword no longer symbolized
the defence of Christian values, but the amorality of a nation thirsting for world
domination.60 In a 1914 article in Russkaya muzïkal’naya gazeta, L. I-ov argued
that the outcome of the present war would be decided ‘not just by cannons’ [не
одни пушки], but by the ‘internal life of enemy peoples’ [то и внутреняя жизнь
враждебных народов].61 He identified the ‘same tendency’ [явления одного
порядка] embodied in Nietzsche’s Overman, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Wagner’s
Siegfried and argued that such a tendency could not rightly be defined as

57
On the liberal tendencies of Trubetskoy’s ideas and their philosophical basis, see
Randall A. Poole, ‘The Neo-Idealist Reception of Kant in the Moscow Psychological
Society’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 60/2 (1999), pp. 319–43.
58
Evgeniy Trubetskoy, ‘Voyna i mirovaya zadacha Rossii’ [War and the world task
of Russia], Russkaya mïsl’ 12 (1914), pp. 88–96 (p. 91); S[ergey] Bulgakov, ‘Russkiye
dumï’ [Russian thoughts], Russkaya mïsl’ 12 (1914), pp. 108–15 (p. 109); A. Smirnov
(Kutacheskiy), ‘Pochemu nam dorog Konstantinopol’?’ [Why is Constantinople important
to us?] Russkaya mïsl’ 4 (1915), pp. 20–22 (p. 20).
59
Trubetskoy, ‘Voyna i mirovaya zadacha Rossii’, pp. 90–96.
60
See for instance ‘Vil’gel’m ili germanskiy narod?’ [Wilhelm or the German narod?]
Moskovskiye vedomosti [Moscow news] 106 (1915).
61
L. I-ov, ‘Po povodu stat’i “Ob iskusstve vragov”’ [About the article ‘On the art of
the enemy’], Russkaya muzïkal’naya gazeta 44 (1914), pp. 782–5 (p. 783).
66 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

‘barbarism’ [варварство], but was in fact simply an expression of modern German

culture itself. The war between Germany and Russia was therefore not just a series
of ‘strategic maneuvers’ [стратегических маневров], but was a ‘spiritual war’
[духовной борьбы] between two diametrically opposed cultures. For this reason,
he concluded, all works of German culture, including the music of Wagner, should
be banned from Russia because ‘in addition to the personality of their creator
(belonging to all humanity), that same spirit of the narod is present which in these
days mysteriously inspires the enemy army in its bloody battle against us’.62 In
this assessment, Durïlin’s connection between Wagner and the German narod was
preserved and expanded upon; regardless of the composer’s universal genius that
allowed his music to appeal to people of all cultures, the destructive Germanic
character was unavoidably imprinted upon his musical works.63 The idea that this
was a cultural war, not merely a state war, was cited repeatedly. Russia, it was
argued, was called to do battle with the very nature of German culture, embodied
both by the militaristic stance of its government and by the national culture of its
people.64 One of the most convenient symbols for describing this ‘German spirit’
[немецкий дух] was Wagner’s Siegfried.
Music critic A. Gorsky expanded upon this imagery in a series of articles
entitled ‘Germanism and music’, which appeared from 1915 to 1916 in the
Odessa-based Yuzhnïy muzïkal’nïy vestnik [Southern musical herald].65 Noting
the earlier enthusiasm surrounding the Wagnerian anniversaries of 1913 and the
premiere of Parsifal in Russia, Gorsky concluded that, only half a year later,
nothing remained of the ‘German spirit’ that the musical work had embodied.66
Instead, he claimed that Wagner’s creative output should be studied as a means
of reaching a clear understanding of the motivations of the German enemy.
He suggested that Wagner himself was responsible for Germany’s militaristic
stance; by creating the character of Siegfried, Gorsky argued, Wagner had laid
the basis for future German development, uniting what had been a series of
small states and principalities into a single, militaristic whole under the guidance
of Prussia.67 The path of war was the embodiment of Germany’s embrace of the

62
‘В них, кроме личности их творца, принадлежащей всему человечеству,
присутствует и тот самый дух его народа, который в эти дни таинственно вдохновляет
враждебные полки в их кровавой борьбе против нас.’ Ibid., pp. 784–5.
63
Ibid., pp. 782–5.
64
See for instance [anonymous], ‘V religiozno-filosofskom obshchestve’ [In the
religious-philosophical society], Russkiye vedomosti 230 (1914), p. 4.
65
A. Gorskiy, ‘Germanizm i muzïka’ [Germanism and music], Yuzhnïy muzïkal’nïy
vestnik (YMV) [Southern musical herald] 6 (1915), pp. 6–9; 7 (1915), pp. 9–12; 12–13
(1915), pp. 3–4; 14–15 (1915), pp. 1–3; 5–6 (1916), pp. 23–5.
66
Ibid., 12–13 (1915), p. 3.
67
Ibid., pp. 3–4; 5–6 (1916), p. 23.
 How Russian was Wagner? 67

hero Siegfried, the same path to which Germany had been called by Nietzsche
in his later writings.68
Gorsky’s image of the German spirit that emerged from a close analysis of
Wagner’s apparently prophetic works was fundamentally negative. Wagner had been
the first to see that humanity’s ‘bright hopes for a wonderful, indefinably distant
future’ [крушение радужных надежд на прекрасное неопределенно-далекое
будущее] were doomed to failure due to the lack of ‘immediate general-human
actions in the present’ [ближайших общечеловеческих действий в настоящем],
an analysis expressed symbolically by the death of the gods in Wagner’s Ring.
As Gorski darkly reminded his readers, Siegfried had not been able to forestall
the destruction of Valhalla and the death of the gods; rather, all had died together.
Nor did Parsifal offer a more positive vision of the future to Wagner’s German
audience: ‘Parsifal is not an embodiment of the German spirit, like Siegfried, but
only a shadowy projection, a hopeless hope, an entreaty for help, spasmodically
stretched out hands.…The final mystery of Wagner is a dying mumble.’69 Caught
between the two visions of the future Wagner had embodied in these works,
Germany was left with only two options: ‘to suffer and die quickly or to suffer and
die slowly’ [скорое страдаине и смерть, или медленное страдание и смерть].70
A 1915 review of Wagner’s Ring, published in the Moscow journal Muzïka [Music],
offered a similarly dire interpretation of the composer’s work, finding in Der Ring
‘a document, illuminating more clearly than many diplomatic letters the true sources
of [those] tendencies causing the unavoidable, tragic catastrophe bursting out before
our eyes…a gloomy, bloody meaning for the contemporary reader is found in these
significant words emphasized by the author’.71
Nevertheless, not all Russian commentators were so quick to abandon what
they perceived as Wagner’s ‘Russian’ identity. Although Wagner had embodied
the essence of Germany’s militaristic culture in Der Ring, Parsifal might still
symbolize Christian virtue rather than secular thirst for power. Indeed, the periodical
press of the day often cited Parsifal as symbolizing Russia’s task of a ‘Holy War’
against Germany.72 While seeking to deny the national basis of the current conflict,

68
According to Gorskiy, Wagner’s Siegfried symbolized Nietzsche. See ibid., 12–13
(1915), p. 4.
69
‘Парсифал не воплощение германского духа, как Зигфрид, но лишь теневая
проэкция, безнадежная надежда, мольба о помощи, судорожно протянутые руки…
Последняя мистерия Вагнера—это предсмертный лепет.’ Ibid., 5–6 (1916), p. 25.
70
Ibid., pp. 24–5.
71
‘Документ, могущий ярче многих дипломатических нот исветить истинные
истоки тенденций, обусловивших неизбежность трагической катастрофы, разразившейся
на наших глазах…Мрачный, кровавый смысл кроется в этих подчеркнутых автором
многозначительных словах для современного читателя.’ Ars. Avr., ‘Rikhard Vagner:
Nibelungi’ [Richard Wagner: The Nibelungs], Muzïka 218 (1915), p. 248.
72
See for instance Yury Shamurin, ‘Svyataya voyna’ [Holy war], Muzïka 193 (1914),
pp. 462–72.
68 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

Evgeny Trubetskoy nevertheless celebrated Russia’s current task in the conflict—

to find a ‘Christian answer to the national question’ [христианского разрешения
национального вопроса].73 A. Smirnov, alluding to the shared interests of Germany
and Russia in the lands of the weakening Ottoman Empire, similarly interpreted
the aims of the two countries in symbolic terms informed by Wagner. He saw in
German aims on Constantinople a cold lust for power, comparable to the desire for
the Nibelung’s Ring; in contrast, Russian aims were symbolized by the holy space
of St. Sophia. Moreover, ‘all Constantinople is such a symbol for us [Russians]—a
symbol of spiritual rebirth and comprehension of the wisdom of God’.74 Insisting
that, in retrospect, Wagner had never been ‘truly German’ (despite his expression
of the faulty basis of German unification in Der Ring), Gorsky insisted that the
mystery-drama Parsifal held a second, ‘hidden liturgy’ [скрытая литургия]
incomprehensible to the German narod, but apparent to the Russian narod, who had
already ‘felt’ [чувствовал] this truth. Through Russia, ‘humanity might be saved
and might save the whole world’ [человечеству возможно спастись от погибели
и спасти весь космос].75 It was the task of Russia to free music from ‘German
dominance’, and thereby free humanity from the militaristic path selected by the
German narod. Wagner had shown the Russian narod the path to follow, but it was
their task as Russians to bring it to fruition.

Conclusions

Within wartime Russian discourse, Wagner was interpreted both as the prophet
of Russia’s future mission and as the symbolic expression (occasionally even the
cause) of German militarism. However much his Russian admirers tried to glorify
the ‘Christian mystery’ that he had sought to create in Parsifal, the sword of
Siegfried served as a weighty counterbalance. As Durïlin had suggested in 1913,
Wagner was the prophet of Russia’s spiritual mission, calling the country to its
holy task, but his very German nature prevented him from being the prophet who
could help bring it to pass. Regardless of Wagner’s status as a universal musical
genius, in the end he was, in the midst of growing nationalist hatred fueled by war,
too German. His message in Parsifal might serve to inspire Russian patriots, but
he could never unconditionally be claimed as their own.
As the war dragged on, discussions of Wagner featured less prominently
in the press. The reality of military conflict limited publication possibilities,
while ongoing concert performances emphasized works by Russian composers

73
This goal had been previously voiced by Vladimir Solov’yov. See Gaut, ‘Can a
Christian be a Nationalist?’ pp. 77–94.
74
‘И весь Константинополь для нас такой символ—символ духовного
возрождения, нового идейного творчества в духе и постижении премудрости Божией.’
Smirnov, ‘Pochemu nam dorog Konstantinopol’?’ p. 22.
75
Gorskiy, ‘Germanizm i muzïka’, 5–6 (1916), pp. 25–6.
 How Russian was Wagner? 69

and composers from the Allied powers. Perhaps the most damning critique of
Wagner’s significance for Russia was offered by philosopher Sergey Bulgakov
in 1916. Rejecting the entire strain of thought that had emphasized Wagner’s
unique connection with Christianity (embodied in Parsifal), and therefore with
Russian culture, he concluded that Wagner’s ideas had encouraged occultism and
distracted people from a true understanding of the higher purpose of art.76 Wagner’s
connection with Russia’s spiritual calling was transformed, in Bulgakov’s reading,
into profanation of true Christianity.
The figures of Siegfried and Parsifal were repeatedly held up in the pre-
revolutionary periodical press as symbols of ‘German’ and ‘Russian’ national
character. An elevated sense of Russia’s messianic mission gave rise to attempts
to lay claim to Parsifal as a uniquely Christian (and therefore Russian) work; at
the same time, German militarism was explained as a natural outcome of the spirit
of Siegfried. In this way, Wagner was imagined as the figure both of Russia’s
salvation and, as Russia’s war effort faltered, of her destruction. As a figure
symbolizing conflicting German and Russian national ideals, the evocation of the
composer in either role sounded a death-knell for the multi-ethnic Russian empire,
already shuddering under the weight of ethnic violence awakened by war.
Wagner’s symbolic image was transformed once again in the aftermath
of the revolutions of 1917. The aggressively atheistic stance of the Bolshevik
government was mirrored by the virtual disappearance of Wagner’s Parsifal from
both the public stage and from general discussion. In contrast, Der Ring once
again took center stage in the civil war and NEP eras, periods of dramatic social
upheaval.77 No longer interpreted as a symbol of Germany’s national character,
Siegfried was seen as a revolutionary social figure, while the death of the gods
and destruction of Valhalla provided an allegorical portrayal of the downfall of
bourgeois society.78 Just as nationalist rhetoric in the final years of the Russian
empire had assigned Wagner an increasingly exclusive nationalist meaning, the
internationalist discourse of the early Soviet period transformed the composer
into a social revolutionary. While it is questionable how accurate an interpretation
either representation offered of the composer or his music, as a symbol with
disputed meanings, Wagner provides a valuable prism through which to access the
anxieties, hopes and fears of past eras.

76
S[ergey] Bulgakov, ‘Iskusstvo i teurgiya: fragment’ [Art and theurgy: a fragment],
Russkaya mïsl’ 12 (December 1916), pp. 1–24 (pp. 20–22).
77
The New Economic Policy (NEP) was introduced by Vladimir Lenin in March
1921 to help the fledgling Soviet Union overcome the economic devastation caused by the
civil war. The NEP allowed small businesses to reopen and function for private property,
while control of banks, foreign trade and large industries remained in the hands of the state.
78
Glatzer Rosenthal, ‘Wagnerism in Russia’, pp. 229–45; Bartlett, Wagner and
Russia, pp. 221–58.
This page has been left blank intentionally
 Chapter 4
Prophecy of a Revolution: Aleksey Losev on
Wagner’s Aesthetic Outlook
Vladimir Marchenkov

Richard Wagner’s music and thought found a warm, if also often critical, reception
in Russia in the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. His operas and
theoretical writings elicited heated polemics from Russian music critics such
as Vladimir Stasov and Herman Laroche, impassioned reactions from leading
composers such as Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Aleksandr Serov, resentment and
dismissal from writers such as Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky, and flights
of inspired reflection by Russian thinkers such as Sergey Durïlin. Both his operas
and aesthetic ideas were enthusiastically embraced by the Holy Trinity of Russian
symbolism: Aleksandr Blok, Andrey Bely and Vyacheslav Ivanov. As Abram
Gozenpud remarked, in that time period ‘there was no outstanding Russian cultural
figure who did not respond in one way or another to the German composer’s
oeuvre and did not take part in debates about him.’1
The Soviet times represent a stark contrast to this lively interest – with the
remarkable, rule-confirming exceptions of Anatoly Lunacharsky’s lectures during
the early stages of the new regime and Sergey Eisenstein’s short-lived production of
Die Walküre in 1940.2 Between the 1920s and 1960s only a handful of publications
on Wagner appeared in the Soviet Union, all of them less than substantial. The
situation began cautiously to change in the 1950s and 1960s, and looming large
in the slowly growing stream of commentary is the figure of Aleksey Losev, one
among a handful of survivors who spanned the gap between the pre- and post-
Stalin Russias.
Losev’s engagement with Wagner is a vivid example of that cultural-historical
bridge. In 1918–19 he wrote ‘A Philosophical Commentary on Richard Wagner’s
Dramas’ that remained unpublished until 50 years later when it became the basis

1
‘Не было ни одного выдающегося деятеля культуры в России, который бы
не откликнулся так или иначе на творчество немецкого композитора и не принял
бы участия в его обсуждении.’ Abram Gozenpud, Rikhard Vagner i russkaya kul’tura
[Richard Wagner and Russian culture] (Leningrad, 1990), p. 5. Unless indicated otherwise,
translation here and further in this chapter is mine.
2
See Gozenpud’s treatment of this production in Rikhard Vagner, pp. 279–84. The
author devotes a mere dozen pages, in an almost 300-page book, to the entire Soviet period
(pp. 275–87).
72 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

for an essay titled ‘The Problem of Richard Wagner in the Past and the Present: (In
Conjunction with the Analysis of His Tetralogy The Ring of the Nibelung)’.3 Ten
years after its appearance Losev published another commentary, ‘The Historical
Significance of Richard Wagner’s Aesthetic Outlook’, as an introduction to a
collection of the composer’s writings.4 These statements were then and remain
today the most significant philosophical Russian response to the composer’s
output. This chapter relates Losev’s interpretation of Wagner’s philosophy to the
Russian philosopher’s own aesthetic doctrine as it was expressed in his 1976 book
The Problem of the Symbol and Realist Art.5 Much like the return of Wagner to
Russia after a long hiatus, Losev’s philosophy of the symbol as it emerged in the
1970s was a return of early twentieth-century Russian symbolism – into a new
context marked by the transformation that Russian culture had undergone during
the often dark and stormy decades in between.

The Problem of Wagner

Aleksey Fyodorovich Losev (1893–1988) was the author of several dozen books
and hundreds of essays on aesthetics, language, symbolism and myth. He finished
Moscow Imperial University in 1917 with degrees in philosophy and classical
philology and later taught at various Soviet universities. In 1929 together with his
wife Valentina he secretly took monastic vows; this fact was revealed only after his
death. In 1930 Losev was condemned to 10 years of labour camps for publishing
his eighth book, The Dialectics of Myth. He was released in 1933 as an invalid but
for the next 25 years was not allowed to teach or publish on philosophical subjects.
Losev’s philosophy is a highly original amalgam of Christian Neoplatonism,
German idealism, phenomenology, Russian religious thought, especially that of
Vladimir Solov’yov, and a strategically administered dose of Marxism. Already in
the 1920s he elaborated his ‘phenomenological-dialectical’ method that combined
Edmund Husserl’s doctrine of eidos with G. F. W. Hegel’s dialectical logic, but also
frequently resonated with ancient Neoplatonists like Proclus. In the philosophy
of language he developed the doctrine of onomatodoxy, rooted in the Eastern
Orthodox theology of God’s name. The crowning achievement of his life was an
epic eight-volume (in 10 actual tomes) History of Ancient Aesthetics spanning 15

3
Aleksey Losev, ‘Problema Rikharda Vagnera v proshlom i nastoyashchem’ [The
problem of Richard Wagner in the past and the present], Voprosï estetiki [Questions in
aesthetics], 8 (1968), pp. 67–196.
4
Aleksey Losev, ‘Istoricheskiy smïsl esteticheskogo mirovozzreniya Rikharda
Vagnera’ [The historical significance of Richard Wagner’s aesthetic outlook], in Rikhard
Vagner: izbrannïye rabotï [Richard Wagner: selected works] (Moscow, 1978), pp. 7–48.
5
Aleksey Losev, Problema simvola i realisticheskoye iskusstvo [The problem of the
symbol and realist art] (Moscow, 1976). The second, corrected and supplemented edition
appeared posthumously from the same publisher in 1995 and is used here.
 Prophecy of a Revolution 73

centuries of Antiquity and without precedent in world classical scholarship. The

last three decades of his life when this History was being published were also the
time of his highest productivity in a striking variety of other areas, as well as in
teaching. His importance as a figure connecting pre-revolutionary with post-Soviet
Russian philosophy, already considerable in the 1970s and 1980s, has grown
steadily since the fall of the Soviet Union. Losev’s essays on Wagner constitute
only a tiny portion in his vast output but they merit attention, as I pointed out
above, by virtue of being the most significant event in the philosophical reception
of Wagner’s work and ideas in Russia.6
As the Russian musicologist Konstantin Zenkin noted, ‘It would hardly be an
exaggeration to say that Losev was not only the greatest connoisseur and admirer
of Wagner in Russia, but also a Wagnerite in spirit.’7
In his later reminiscences Losev often spoke of his youthful enthusiasm for
Wagner’s operas. He heard them in 1914 in Berlin where he was on a post-graduate
study tour, cut short by the outbreak of World War I.8 References to Wagner are
strewn over the pages of his youthful diaries. What he called his ‘first real lectures’
as a young university professor was a course on ‘Richard Wagner’s Creative Path’
in the early 1920s and it was, he remarked, his ‘favourite topic’ and his native
element.9
The word ‘problem’ in the title of Losev’s 1968 130-page essay refers to the
themes and concerns, not to say obsessions, that defined the artist, constituted the
core of his persona and manifested themselves virtually in all aspects of his output.
In other words, Losev argues for understanding Wagner as a problematic node
of artistic, philosophical, socio-political, and cultural anxieties and aspirations,
brought into existence by the characteristic conditions of the nineteenth century and
remaining relevant in the second half of the twentieth. The centrepiece of Losev’s
understanding of Wagner is the claim that the composer’s oeuvre as a whole, and
especially in his peak achievement, Der Ring, is the prophecy of a catastrophic

6
For the most detailed account of Losev’s life and work available in English to date
see my ‘Translator’s Introduction: Aleksey Losev’s Theory of Myth’, in Aleksey Losev, The
Dialectics of Myth, trans. Vladimir Marchenkov (London and New York, 2003), pp. 3–65.
7
‘Вряд ли будет преувеличением сказать, что Лосев являлся крупнейшим в
России не только знатоком и почитателем Вагнера, но – и вагнерианцем по духу.’
Konstantin Zenkin, ‘Rikhard Vagner v interpretatsii A. F. Loseva’ [Richard Wagner in A. F.
Losev’s interpretation], in K. A. Zhabinskiy and K. V. Zenkin (eds), Muzïka v prostranstve
kul’turï [Music within the space of culture] (Rostov-Don, 2001), p. 54.
8
Aza Takho-Godi and Viktor Troitskiy (eds), Aleksey Fedorovich Losev: iz
tvorcheskogo naslediya. Sovremenniki o mïslitele [Aleksey Fedorovich Losev: selected
writings. Contemporary commentators about the thinker] (Moscow, 2007), p. 6. See also
Aleksey Losev, Mne bïlo 19 let: Dnevniki. Pis’ma. Proza [I was 19: diaries, letters, prose],
ed. Aza Takho-Godi (Moscow, 1997), p. 106.
9
Aleksey Losev, Strast’ k dialektike: literaturnïye razmïshleniya filosofa [Passion for
dialectics: a philosopher’s literary reflections] (Moscow, 1990), p. 41.
74 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

collapse of the world order founded on modern European individualism and

imperialism.
The first half of the essay is devoted to a survey of literature on Wagner, both
inside and outside Russia. Although such a survey could not be exhaustive, Losev
does discuss some key figures in this vast commentary, among whom Friedrich
Nietzsche, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, Leo Tolstoy, George
Bernard Shaw and Thomas Mann particularly stand out. The survey is followed
by an analysis of Wagner’s aesthetic outlook, which Losev defines as romantic
symbolism, followed in turn by a detailed discussion of the symbolism of Der
Ring, and closes with a summing-up of what Losev means by ‘the problem of
Richard Wagner’. This is how he describes it:

It is the problem of (I) an extremely generalised and most intensely

experienced universalism that has fully reached cosmologism or, if you will,
sociocosmologism. Further, it is the problem of (II) an extremely deep and quite
ecstatically experienced individualism, when cosmic universality, evolving along
its intractable paths, falls apart into separate heroic persons who are constantly
trying to bring the entire world under their power. The problem of Wagner is
one of (III) most acute impressionism as a result of isolated self-assertion of the
heroic persons that have arisen illegitimately. Not only every generalised idea in
Wagner’s heroes, but also every sensation and every smallest element of it are
pervaded by a nervous, one might say, hysterical self-assertion that is curiously
coupled with great spiritual animation and philosophical insight into the essence
of things. In Wagner hysterical spirituality and spiritual hysteria became that
limit which heroic individualism reached in its unprecedented development.
But the problem of Wagner is also one of (IV) the tragic demise of all these
excessively advanced, excessively deepened, excessively refined heroes of
individual self-assertion, the problem of the decline of the entire individualistic
culture in general. And, finally, the problem of Wagner is not only the ecstatically
prophetic foreboding of the demise of individual heroes, who have illegitimately
arisen from the illegitimate, irrational and obscure cosmic universality and are
doomed to return to its empty and dark abyss, but also a cry about the need for
a new order of the world, with a new, brighter cosmic universality and with
new, brighter generations arising from it, none of whom will any longer suffer a
punishment for the sin of individuality, but will eternally celebrate their bright
victory, along with the similarly bright actuality that has generated them. At the
stage of Der Ring Wagner knows no such bright actuality, nor any such bright
generations (V). At this stage his soul-rending prophetism has only a negative
significance.10

10
‘Она есть проблема (I) чрезвычайно обобщенного и напряженнейшим образом
пережитого универсализма, вполне дошедшего до космологизма или, так сказать,
социокосмологизма. Далее, она есть проблема (II) чрезвычайно глубокого и вполне
исступленно пережитого индивидуализма, когда космическая общность на путях
 Prophecy of a Revolution 75

In the light of Losev’s overall highly positive assessment of Wagner it is

instructive to include here the following portrait of the composer’s persona, not
least for its rather merciless probity. In tones reminiscent of Theodor Adorno’s
acerbic language Losev speaks of Wagner’s restive and unbalanced nature, his
tendency to set himself impossible tasks, restless peregrination and failure to find
stability anywhere. He calls Wagner ‘a hysterical nature that suffered from both
megalomania and deepest pessimism’ [вполне истерическая натура, страдавшая
гигантоманией и глубочайшим пессимизмом] and notes the composer’s baffling
melange of obsessions: romanticism, revolution, Schopenhauer, hoary Germanic
past, Indian nirvana and Catholic liturgy. Without a penny to his name or any idea
where to get the requisite funds, Wagner conceived the grandiose plan for the
Bayreuth Theatre that eventually cost enormous sums. ‘Most important’, Losev
observes,

Wagner felt no secure social ground under his feet. He was blinded and deafened,
oppressed and overwhelmed by the impending global catastrophe. He could not
stand the bourgeois world and feared the advancing imperialism. This hatred
made him plunge into old mythology, ancient, outdated forms of life in which
he likewise had little faith and for which he found no firm support in the reality
around him. All this made him hysterical, drove him to despair, to unequal
struggle; made him a pessimist who looked for an escape in subjective flights

своего неисповедимого развития рассыпалась на отдельные героические личности,

все время пытающиеся уничтожить все живое вокруг себя и подчинить весь мир
своей власти. Проблема Вагнера есть проблема (III) острейшего импрессионизма, как
результата изолированного самоутверждения незаконно появившихся героических
личностей. У героев Вагнера не только каждая обобщенная идея, но и каждое
чувственное ощущение, каждый малейший его элемент пронизаны нервозным, можно
сказать, почти истерическим самоутверждением, которое причудливым образом
совмещается с большой одухотворенностью и философским углублением в сущность
вещей. Истерическая одухотворенность и одухотворенная истеричность оказались
у Вагнера тем пределом, до которого дошло небывалое развитие героического
индивидуализма. Но проблема Вагнера есть также и (IV) проблема гибели всех
этих чересчур развитых, чересчур углубленных, чересчур утонченных героев
индивидуального самоутверждения, проблема гибели всей индивидуалистической
культуры вообще. Наконец, проблема Вагнера есть исступленно-пророческое
предчувствие не только гибели отдельных героев, незаконно вышедших из
незаконной, неразумной, непросветленной космической всеобщности и подлежащих
возвращению в ее пустые и темные бездны, но также вопль о необходимости какого-
то нового устроения мира с новой, более светлой космической всеобщностью и с
новыми, более светлыми ее порождениями, когда каждая из них уже не будет нести
кары за грех своей индивидуальности, но будет вечно ликовать свою светлую победу
вместе с породившей их такой же светлой действительностью. На стадии “Кольца”
Вагнер не знает ни такой светлой действительности, ни таких светлых ее порождений
(V). Его душераздирающий профетизм имеет на стадии “Кольца” только негативное
значение.’ Losev, ‘Problema Rikharda Vagnera’, p. 194.
76 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

and ecstasies, which in the same breath he criticised, humiliated, rejected and
brought to the pitch of utter tragedy.11

The figure painted in this excerpt is the antithesis of Losev’s own persona and yet
there is no doubt that the Russian philosopher had an enthusiasm for Wagner, an
enthusiasm that went so far as to make him ignore or even defend the less defensible
features of the composer’s character, but also survived two revolutions and a civil
war, Stalin’s camps and a quarter-century of forced silence, as well as a life-long
guarded suspiciousness with which the ideological authorities treated him.
Losev’s most urgent task in the essay is to argue that, first and foremost,
Wagner was, he repeats time and again, the prophet of ‘the demise of the European
individualistic culture’. Second, he criticises and rejects the wide-spread view
that Wagner’s ideological evolution went from the progressive aspirations of
his younger years, culminating in his participation in the Dresden uprising of
1848, to an allegedly reactionary stance later in life when he supposedly became
the official composer of German nationalism and imperialism. Losev insists
instead that Wagner’s disillusionment after 1848 was caused by the realisation
of the insufficiency of political action and ideological points of view. Wagner
came to view his role, rather, as a critic of the most basic principles on which
the existing social order rested, reaching far beyond merely political ideas. He
remained, Losev forcefully puts forth, a revolutionary in spirit all of his life
but the revolution he had in mind was not of a political nature; it was a total
transformation of the existing world order. The third most important point that
Losev advances is that Wagner’s aesthetic outlook should be comprehended not
just on the basis of his theoretical statements, which, Losev notes, were often
incoherent and self-contradictory, but, above all, through analysing his operas.
In other words, rather than a doctrinaire enslaving creativity to abstract ideas,
Wagner was an artist par excellence and his theoretical writings were, Losev
proposes, merely auxiliary to articulating his artistic visions. Hence the need
for the detailed discussion of the messages contained in the mythology of Der
Ring – along with its music and stage directions – that constitutes a substantial
part of Losev’s essay.

11
‘Самое же главное – это то, что Вагнер в социальном отношении не чувствовал
под собой никакой почвы. Он был ослеплен и оглушен, подавлен и уничтожен
надвигавшейся мировой катастрофой. Он не выносил буржуазного мира и страшился
грядущего империализма. Эта ненависть заставляла его бросаться в старинную
мифологию, к древним, уже отжившим формам жизни, в которые он тоже плохо
верил и для которых не находил твердой опоры в окружающей его действительности.
Все это делало его истериком, приводило его к отчаянию, неравной борьбе, делало
его пессимистом, искавшим для себя выхода в субъективных подъемах и восторгах,
которые он сам тут же и критиковал, унижал, отрицал и приводил к безысходной
трагедии.’ Ibid., p. 101.
 Prophecy of a Revolution 77

The romantic component in Wagner’s aesthetics, as Losev observes, is rooted

in the youthful impressions the composer derived from Beethoven’s music and
especially the Ninth Symphony, as well as from E. T. A. Hoffmann’s writings.
‘It was precisely romanticism’, Losev writes, ‘that inculcated in Wagner the
tendency towards extreme generalisations and towards absolutising these
generalisations in the shape of mythological images.’12 The early operas, from
Die Feen to Lohengrin, belong to this romantic phase. However, around 1850
Wagner’s romanticism begins to assume such ‘unexpected and unrecognisable
forms’ [неожиданные и неузнаваемые формы] that some new definition seems
in order. This new phase is marked, according to Losev, by Wagner’s deepening
philosophical interests. Slight though it may have been, his acquaintance with
the writings of Ludwig Feuerbach encouraged in him ‘the tendency to interpret
the phenomena of world religions and mythologies as products of immanent
human creativity, as a necessary moment in the history of human self-assertion,
as a symbol of humanity’s inner quest aiming to assert itself as the only and
absolute value in the universe’.13 Likewise, his enthusiastic encounter with
Schopenhauer’s philosophy confirmed Wagner in his own emerging insights.
As Losev puts it, the similarities between their views ‘corresponded to the
general spirit of the cultural process of the time that inevitably led to pessimism
and despair or, at any rate, to will-less contemplation’.14 Still there is a crucial
distinction between Wagner and Schopenhauer that Losev notes: the composer
did not choose resignation as a satisfying response to the power of irrational
will. He chose instead to hold up the mirror of his operas to the world swayed by
this power in order to show this world its own fated end. Thus what we have in
Wagner is a mythology reconstituted by philosophical reflection and presented as
a work of art. Losev uses the phrase ‘romantic symbolism’ only once in his essay
and does not state explicitly that Wagner’s philosophical evolution transformed
the composer’s aesthetics from romanticism into symbolism but the logic of his
argument leaves no doubt that that was his intent. This intent will become even
clearer when I discuss Losev’s theory of the symbol below.
Wagner uses mythology, according to Losev, in order to raise ‘artistic
images to extreme generalisation’, where these images function ‘as if they
were a whole system of the laws of nature and society and as if they possessed

12
‘Это именно романтизм воспитал в Вагнере постоянную склонность к
предельным обобщениям и к абсолютизации этих обобщений в виде мифологических
образов.’ Losev, ‘Problema Rikharda Vagnera’, p. 136.
13
‘Стремление толковать феномены мировой религии и мифологии как
продукты имманентно-человеческого творчества, как необходимый момент в истории
человеческого самоутверждения, как символ внутренних исканий человечества с
целью утвердить себя как единственную и абсолютную ценность мироздания.’ Ibid.
14
‘Отвечали общему духу тогдашнего культурного развития, неизбежно
приводившего к пессимизму и отчаянию или, в крайнем случае, к безвольной
созерцательности.’ Ibid., p. 141.
78 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

their own independent, substantial being’.15 He needed such mythology, Losev

believes, because the methods of realist art no longer sufficed for expressing his
understanding of European culture.16 Wagner wished to depict his characters in
an extremely generalised and intensified way and for this reason they could not
be ordinary, everyday personages, but had to turn into mighty heroes and demons.
A realist portrayal of ‘the universal human and global life’ [общечеловеческую
и общемировую правду жизни] would be too prosaic and abstract for Wagner’s
purposes and thus this life becomes arbor vitae, the cosmic Ash Tree, that a
hero violates in order to make himself a spear and to submit the world to his
capricious individual will. What imparts an especially tragic quality to these
heroes is the fact that, while resolutely condemning it, the composer at the same
time depicts their individualism ‘in all its potency, beauty and depth’ [во всей
его силе, красоте, глубине].17 This is especially true of Siegfried, whom, Losev
remarks, Wagner paradoxically regarded at once as the most perfect human
being and a hero who must perish because of his one-sidedness, suffering, in
fact, a pitiful death. Losev further points out that Wagner transformed medieval
Germanic legends by introducing themes and ideas utterly unknown to them:

The condemnation of the eternal chase after gold, along with constant misery
and death caused by it; the rejection of the very idea of the ring as a symbol of
world domination that is absent from the old Germanic Song of the Nibelungs
… disgust at the sight of most cruel exploitation of the Nibelungs … and,
finally, the self-condemnation of the rulers for their own abuse of power, their
self-denial and self-renunciation, their voluntary exit into nothingness in order
to make room for more perfect forms of human existence.18

Thus in Losev’s interpretation the substantive content of Wagner’s art, the peculiar
rendering of traditional mythology, is inseparable from the aesthetic paradigm,
romantic symbolism, that gives this content its characteristic shape.

15
‘Художественную образность до предельного обобщения … [становится]
как бы целой системой законов природы и общества и потому обладает своим
собственным, как бы вполне независимым, как бы вполне субстанциальным бытием.’
Ibid., p. 142.
16
Ibid., p. 143.
17
Ibid., pp. 146–7.
18
‘Осуждение вечной погони за золотом и связанных с ней постоянных несчастий
и смертоубийств; неприятие самой идеи кольца как символа мирового могущества,
отсутствующей в древнегерманской “Песне о Нибелунгах” … отвращение при виде
жесточайшей эксплуатации Нибелунгов … и, наконец, самоосуждение властителей за
свое злоупотребление властью, их самоотрицание и самоотречение, их добровольный
уход в небытие, чтобы предоставить место более совершенным формам человеческой
жизни.’ Ibid., pp. 191–2.
 Prophecy of a Revolution 79

It should be clear that, given such a reading of Der Ring’s message, Losev
could not agree with the opinion that Wagner’s late period was marked by a
reactionary politics. His particular target in attacking this view is Roman
Gruber’s 1934 book on Wagner in which the composer is denounced, with
typical Stalinist rhetoric, as a nationalist, religious mystic, racist and even
artistic failure.19 Rejecting Gruber’s criticisms as ‘barbaric vulgarism’, Losev
quotes Wagner’s own famous remark: if we imagine in the Nibelung’s hands a
stock broker’s briefcase instead of the fatal ring, we shall see the ghostly ruler of
the world. ‘Thus the impending demise of individualistic culture’, he drives the
point home, ‘was deeply and acutely experienced by Wagner in all periods of his
work, both in general socio-political sense and in the purely artistic sense.’20 It is
worthwhile recalling here Losev’s final formulation of ‘the problem of Richard
Wagner’, quoted earlier: at the stage of Der Ring Wagner’s prophecy did not
provide the vision of a brighter future for humanity but only negatively pointed
to the need for such a vision.

Wagner’s Aesthetic Outlook

Losev’s 1978 essay on Wagner’s aesthetic outlook opens with Aleksandr Blok’s
statement made soon after the Russian revolution of 1917:

Wagner is as alive and as new as ever; when Revolution begins to sound in the
air, Wagner’s Art sounds in response; his works will sooner or later be heard and
understood; these works will not be entertainment but will be useful to people;
for art, which is so ‘far removed from life’ (and for that reason dear to some)
in our times leads straight to practice, to action; only its tasks are broader and
deeper than those of realpolitik and are therefore harder to realise.21

19
Roman Gruber, Rikhard Vagner (Moscow, 1934).
20
‘Таким образом, наступающая гибель индивидуалистической культуры’
глубоко и остро переживалась Вагнером во все периоды его творчества, причем как
в области общеполитической и социальной, так и в области чисто художественной.’
Losev, ‘Problema Rikharda Vagnera’, p. 150.
21
‘Вагнер все также жив и так же нов; когда начинает звучать в воздухе
Революция, звучит ответно и Искусство Вагнера; его творения все равно рано или
поздно услышат и поймут; творения эти пойдут не на развлечение, а на пользу
людям; ибо искусство, столь “отдаленное от жизни” (и потому – любезное сердцу
иных) в наши дни, ведет непосредственно к практике, к делу; только задания его
шире и глубже заданий “реальной политики” и потому труднее воплощаются
в жизни.’ Aleksandr Blok, ‘Iskusstvo i revoliutsiya (Po povodu tvoreniya Rikharda
Vagnera)’ [Art and revolution (in reference to Richard Wagner’s work)], quoted in Losev,
‘Istoricheskiy smïsl’, p. 7.
80 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

These words mark Losev’s transition to the next step in his engagement with
the phenomenon of Wagner: to show that the prophet of the bourgeois world’s
demise was also a revolutionary artist. ‘Wagner’s aesthetic’, Losev states, ‘is
one of revolutionary pathos that he preserved throughout his life … . Despite all
life’s collisions, “a free united humanity”, unvanquished, in the composer’s own
words, by the “industry and capital” that destroy art, always remained Wagner’s
ideal.’22 The essay, in fact, raises few new points in comparison with ‘The Problem
of Wagner’; instead it amplifies, clarifies and expands on some of the ideas and
interpretations presented in the earlier piece. Still it is far from being a mere
reiteration and together the two essays present something of a stereoscopic view
of the composer. Also, much more consistently and thoroughly, Losev weaves
the composer’s biography into his discussion of the philosophical import of his
operas.
Losev repeats here his observation that Wagner was deeply affected by the
failure of the 1848 revolution in Europe but, instead of turning reactionary, he
‘generalised revolution to a cosmic scope, finding similar revolutions in the entire
cosmos and depicting them with great enthusiasm’.23 Likewise, Wagner’s view of
the existing bourgeois order developed in the same cosmic direction. One does not
do justice, for example, to Wagner’s theory of money by reading his treatises; one
must also listen to his Ring:

The issue is posed here not simply in sociopolitical terms, but cosmologically; and
the gold is treated here not simply economically, but primarily in cosmological
terms. This is where the truly revolutionary essence of Wagner’s oeuvre lies,
in comparison with which his prosaic socio-political and economic statements
made in his early years are merely naïve attempts to express what cannot be
expressed prosaically.24

Here we also come to the issue already touched upon in the ‘The Problem of
Wagner’: the correct assessment of the composer’s aesthetic outlook is possible

22
‘Эстетика Вагнера и есть эстетика революционного пафоса, который он
сохранил на всю жизнь … Идеалом Вагнера, несмотря ни на какие жизненные
коллизии, всегда оставалось “свободное объединенное человечество”, неподвластное,
по словам композитора, “индустрии и капиталу”, разрушающим искусство.’ Losev,
‘Istoricheskiy smïsl’, p. 8.
23
‘… обобщал революцию до космических размеров, находил во всем космосе
такого же рода революции и с большим восторгом их отображал.’ Ibid., pp. 20–21.
24
‘Здесь вопрос ставится не просто общественно-политически, но
космологически; и золото здесь трактуется не просто экономически, но по преимуществу
космологически. Вот в этом-то и заключается подлинная революционная сущность
вагнеровского творчества, в сравнении с чем его прозаические общественно-
политические высказывания ранних лет являются только наивными попытками
выразить то, что в прозаическом слове не выразимо.’ Ibid., pp. 18–19.
 Prophecy of a Revolution 81

only and primarily if one takes into account what he expressed through the
most important part of his output, his operas. Losev insists that, being neither a
professional philosopher nor a theologian nor a politician nor even a music theorist,
Wagner expounded his views ‘merely polemically’ [только публицистически],
often superficially, ‘without any desire to be the least consistent or systematic’
[без всякого стремления к хотя бы малейшей последовательности и системе].
His musical works, Losev thinks, present a completely different picture: Wagner’s
‘purely musical world’ was created ‘not only with extraordinary genius, but also
with extraordinary originality and strictest consistency over several decades of his
creative life’.25
Losev also sees the philosophical underpinnings of Wagner’s outlook and
artistic effort in the light of the dialectic of subject–object relations. This comes from
Losev’s own life-long conviction that the entire modern world order is conditioned
by an abstract, non-dialectical understanding of this relation. Modernity, according
to his view, is the era of the abstract understanding that cannot comprehend the
mutually dependent and mutually determining nature of the interaction between
the subject and the object, and instead vacillates between extreme subjectivism
and extreme objectivism. It is in this sense that his otherwise somewhat cryptic
remarks should be read, when he speaks, for example, of Wagner’s aesthetics as
‘nothing other than a confession of the neo-European [Losev’s typical term for
‘modern’] individual’ who has

traversed the false path of the absolute opposition between the subject and
the object but, filled with his unrealised yet still monstrous vital powers, he
reached in Wagner’s hands a universal supra-individual fusion that prophesies a
universal human, rather than a bourgeois, revolution.26

And, finally, the revolutionary nature of Wagner’s aesthetics, Losev claims, is

assured by the optimistic conclusions to which the tragedy of the gods and heroes
ultimately leads the listener:

Based on all this one must say that, despite all pessimism and self-renunciation,
all renunciation of pleasure, and, finally, despite the fate by whose decree all

25
‘Это полная противоположность его чисто музыкальному миру, который он
не только с необычайной гениальностью, но также с небывалой оригинальностью и
железной последовательностью изображал в течение нескольких десятков лет своей
творческой жизни.’ Ibid., p. 20.
26
‘… не что иное, как исповедь души новоевропейского индивидуума,
пришедшего к своей последней катастрофе в связи с катастрофой буржуазной
революции […] проделал ложный путь абсолютного противопоставления субъекта и
объекта, но, преисполненный своими неосуществленными, но все еще чудовищными
силами жизни, он достиг у Вагнера всеобщей сверхиндивидуальной слитости,
пророчески вещающей об общечеловеческой, а не буржуазной революции.’ Ibid., p. 47.
82 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

these individualistically blessed gods and heroes are created and destroyed –
despite all this, the world catastrophe that Wagner announces in Der Ring still
opens a path towards a new development of humanity and towards humanity’s
new achievements, this time without the fatal chase after gold.27

Why did Losev wish so much to put an optimistic spin on what he himself
repeatedly described as a prophecy of an enormous disaster? True, historical
optimism was demanded of him by the strictures of official Soviet ideology
but it would be quite a misunderstanding to take this pressure as the decisive
factor. Parsifal is, no doubt, a better candidate than Der Ring to support an
optimistic reading of Wagner’s message and Losev does indeed evoke in passing
the story of the Holy Grail and the saintly simpleton in this essay. (To give it
more prominence would have likely meant to endanger the whole enterprise of
publishing Wagner’s writings for which Losev’s essay served as an introduction
and thus, by the conditions of Soviet publishing, an ideological justification.)
In fact, his discussion of Parsifal is discreetly placed at the end of a short
(and excessively benign) account of the composer’s biography: chronological
placement conceals the philosophical emphasis that the logic of Losev’s argument
puts on Wagner’s final turn to Christian mythology. Losev, who back in the
1930s had been condemned by the regime precisely for ‘Orthodox mysticism’,
no doubt knew the value of caution and chose to deemphasise the inevitable
conclusion that his assessment of the ‘historical significance of Wagner’s
aesthetic outlook’ implied. Thus his defence of Wagner was motivated, among
other things, by the desire to reintroduce into the Soviet intellectual context,
however obliquely, the idea of salvation through redemption. ‘The world of evil,
deception and hypocrisy’, comments Losev sotto voce, ‘crumbles before love,
kindness, and the moral duty that has become a realised ideal of the heart, freed
from egotistical passions.’28 But one might also suggest that the reasons for his
insistence on an optimistic reading of Wagner’s aesthetic outlook become fully
clear only if one takes into account the proactive and optimistic thrust of his own
theory of the symbol.

27
‘На основании всего этого необходимо сказать, что, несмотря ни на какой
пессимизм и самоотречение, ни на какое отречение самонаслаждения и, наконец,
несмотря ни на какую судьбу, велением которой творятся и погибают все эти
индивидуалистически блаженствующие боги и герои, – несмотря на все это, та
мировая катастрофа, о которой вещает Вагнер в “Кольце”, все же открывает путь к
новому развитию человечества и к новым его достижениям уже без роковой погони
за золотом.’ Ibid., p. 40.
28
‘Мир зла, обмана и лицемерия рушится под воздействием любви и
добра, нравственного долга, ставшего реально осуществленным идеалом сердца,
преодолевшего эгоистические страсти.’ Losev, ‘Istoricheskiy smïsl’, p. 15.
 Prophecy of a Revolution 83

The Problem of the Symbol

Losev published The Problem of the Symbol and Realist Art in 1976, four years
after ‘The Problem of Richard Wagner’ and two years prior to the appearance of
his essay on Wagner’s aesthetic outlook, and the chronological proximity of these
three works suggests coordination among them, an impression that is borne out
by a closer comparison. Losev understands symbol as the central category among
all expressive forms; his most general definition of it is a perfect coincidence
of meaning and form, i.e., such a synthesis where the two components become
indistinguishable from each other. He describes this dialectical synthesis as
ideinaya obraznost’, interchangeable with its mirror-image obraznaya ideinost’,
which can be translated as ‘image replete with ideational content’ and ‘ideational
content rendered as image’, respectively. In order to clarify this notion Losev
situates the symbol in the broader context of his semiotics and distinguishes nine
key features in it. The symbol of something includes: (1) the meaning of this thing;
(2) its generalisation; (3) the law that generates the meaning of other things in
the same mould; (4) the regular internal ordering of the thing, i.e., its model; (5)
external expression of internal meaning; (6) a structure charged with an infinite
series of its own manifestations; (7) a sign that generates infinite structures, which
are signified as images replete with ideational content; (8) a sign that determines
the singular entities which it signifies as internally articulated wholes pointing in
a certain direction; and, finally, (9) the identity of the thing with its image, replete
with ideational content, that is an internally articulated whole and the limit of the
infinite series of those singular entities which merge in it.29
To explain, with any degree of fullness, this extremely complex, layered
formula would require a discussion of Losev’s entire semiotic doctrine, quite
unique in itself, which would go far beyond the scope of the present chapter. In
what follows the stress will be on those aspects of Losev’s theory that are most
relevant to his interpretation and appropriation of Wagner’s legacy. One such point
is Losev’s view of the relation between the symbol and artistic images. He notes
that a symbol can be quite inartistic, i.e., symbolism and artistic expression are two
distinct things. ‘[P]ure artistic expression’, he observes, ‘that (like symbolism) also
consists in the complete coincidence of its idea and its image, is regarded as an
object of disinterested contemplation, unrelated to real life.’30 And yet the matter
does not end with this stark opposition: even if its creator consciously rejects all

29
Losev, Problema simvola, pp. 47–8. ‘Internally articulated whole’ is my attempt to
render another of Losev’s peculiar coinages: yedinorazdel’naya tsel’nost’ [единораздельная
цельность]. The Russian yedinorazdel’nïy is a literal translation of the Latin universalis;
the phrase, a cornerstone of Losev’s terminology, emphasises the dialectic of unity and
diversity in a whole.
30
‘[Ч]истая художественность, тоже состоящая из полного совпадения своей
идеи и своего образа, рассматривается как предмет бесокрыстного и внежизненного
созерцания.’ Ibid., p. 118.
84 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

symbolism an artistic image can still be symbolic – albeit not in the same manner
as a symbol in general. This point is clarified by one further distinction.
Losev identifies two degrees of symbolism: symbolism of the first degree is
characteristic of any artistic image insofar as it is an idea realised in an image.
He continues, stating that when ‘all this imagery replete with ideational content
or ideational content rendered as images, taken as a whole, points towards
something that reaches far beyond the limits of the idea and the limits of the
art work’s imagery’, it morphs into symbolism of the second degree: ‘Genuine
symbolism crosses the boundaries of the work’s purely artistic aspect. The art
work as a whole must be construed and experienced as pointing towards … an
infinite series of its various possible transformations.’ This kind of a symbol
‘carries with it, not the purely artistic functions of a work, but its correlation
with … some real life … some ideology, some moral, some sermon, some appeal
and call, some intent to reflect life and to remake it.’31 Thus the key element in
Losev’s ‘genuine symbol’ is what he also describes as ‘the use of the ideational-
imagistic structure as a principle for constructing actuality.’32
Standing close to symbol is another crucially important category in Losev’s
semiotics, myth. We have already seen in the foregoing how central this category
is for Wagner, and Losev certainly relies on his philosophy of myth in his
interpretations of the composer’s work.33 ‘[E]very myth is a symbol’, he states,
‘but not every symbol is a myth.’34 The difference consists in the fact that a myth
is always a story about ‘living beings’ [живые существа] who are, moreover,
immortal and, by virtue of their immortality, possess ‘infinite vital possibilities’
[(обладают) бесконечными жизненными возможностями]. A symbol, on the
other hand, does not necessarily present those individual things that it generates
in the form of living beings. But perhaps even more important, especially when
dealing with Wagner, is Losev’s point that, while a symbol is a reflection of life,

31
‘… вся эта идейная образность, или образная идейность художественного
произведения, взятая в целом, указывает на нечто такое, что далеко выходит за
пределы идеи и за пределы образности художественного произведения. Подлинная
символика есть уже выход за пределы чисто художественной стороны произведения.
Необходимо, чтобы художественное произведение в целом конструировалось
и переживалось как указание на … бесконечный ряд всевозможных своих
перевоплощений. [Он] несет с собой не чисто художественную функции
художественного произведения, но его соотнесенность с … той или другой реальной
жизнью … с той или иной идеологией, с той или иной моралью, с той или другой
проповедью, с теми или иными воззваниями, с намерением и отражать жизнь и ее
переделывать.’ Ibid., p. 119.
32
‘… использование идейно-образной структуры как принципа конструирования
действительности.’ Ibid., p. 136.
33
The fullest account of Losev’s philosophy of myth available in English to date can
be found in Losev’s 1930 book The Dialectics of Myth referenced earlier in this chapter.
34
‘Всякий миф есть символ, но не всякий символ есть миф.’ Losev, Problema
simvola, p. 145.
 Prophecy of a Revolution 85

‘Myth identifies the thing’s image replete with ideational content with the thing
as such, and it does so quite substantially.’35 In myth, in other words, a spear is
a spear and a sword is a sword, no matter how magical they may be. Above all,
a person – a god, heroine or dwarf – is regarded in myth as real, no matter how
fantastical their qualities and powers may be from the ordinary point of view.
One more simultaneous distinction and correlation in Losev’s theory of the
symbol must be noted as particularly useful in dealing with Wagner’s aesthetics,
namely the relation between a symbol and a concept. They coincide almost
completely: both are ‘functions of actuality’ [функции действительности], both
generalise from individual phenomena, both express the regular relation between
the universal and the particular, and both are pregnant with the possibility of
unfolding into infinite series of individual instances. What distinguishes the one
from the other is that a symbol presents all these aspects of its meaning in an
immediate-intuitive form, whereas a concept does so in an intellectual-discursive
manner.36 Like the genuine symbol, for Losev, ‘the most perfect concept is that
which can affect, in turn, the actuality that has generated it, remake this actuality
and perfect it’.37 In fact, not just symbols and concepts, myths and artistic images,
but all signs have the ‘remaking of actuality’ [переделывание действительности]
as their purpose, for which the symbol stands as the most vivid case, and Losev,
in an apparent contradiction to what he said earlier, goes on to propose that, after
all, ‘a purely artistic image, free of all symbolism, seems to be quite impossible’.38
‘[A]ll things are symbolic in their nature’, he remarks. ‘Art presents … images
whose purpose is not only to be self-sufficient objects of disinterested enjoyment,
but also to be instruments for the human person’s orientation in the limitless sea of
actuality, as well as instruments for a creative remaking of this actuality.’39 Along
with Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Schiller, Goethe, Byron, Pushkin, Lermontov and
Dostoevsky, writes Losev, ‘the musical dramas of Richard Wagner, Musorgsky
and Rimsky-Korsakov, the musical poems and symphonies of Scriabin, and
Gor’ky’s Pesnya o Burevestnike [The Song of the Stormy Petrel, 1901] – all these
and a boundless multitude of other art works are filled from beginning to end

35
‘Миф отождествляет идейную образность вещей с вещами как таковыми, и
отождествляет вполне субстанциально.’ Ibid., p. 138.
36
Ibid., p. 149.
37
‘… наиболее совершенным является то понятие, которое способно
обратно воздействовать на породившую его действительность, ее переделывать и
совершенствовать.’ Ibid., p. 158.
38
Ibid.
39
‘Искусство … обладает … художественными образами, цель которых
заключается не только в том, чтобы быть самодовлеющим предметом бескорыстного
удовольствия, но и быть орудиями ориентации человека в безбрежном море
действительности, а также инструментом для ее творческого переделывания.’ Ibid.,
pp. 167–9.
86 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

with various symbols.’40 The statement that follows particularly resonates with his
comments on Wagner:

Charged with enormous socio-political and generally socio-historical force,

these symbols are either prophecies or summing-up of the greatest human
catastrophes and represent the finest and sharpest instruments for our orientation
in these catastrophes, as well as methods of overcoming them.41

Despite unquestionable thematic resonances, it would be inaccurate to say

that Losev returns in The Problem of the Symbol to the symbolism of the early
twentieth century. The view to which he arrives in the 1970s considerably
differs from the symbolism that was proposed, for example, by Vyacheslav
Ivanov. Ivanov’s idea of transforming modern opera into a Dionysian ritual,
Losev remarks, was quite fantastical.42 Ivanov did frequently mix, in a romantic
fashion, art with myth and ritual. Losev, on the other hand, keenly insisted
already in 1930 that an artistic image is an aesthetic object, whereas myth is
the reality itself, seen in a peculiar light. In actual culture this distinction can
be illustrated by the difference between an opera theatre and a church. For
Ivanov and other symbolists, the church was not a legitimate alternative to the
theatre; they could treat it seriously only by essentially aestheticising it, by
looking at it through the lens of poetic perception. By contrast, for Losev – as
for Pavel Florensky – it was almost a priori incontrovertible that the church
was a vital, cornerstone cultural institution, needing no justification through
art. If Aleksandr Blok poetically dreams of performing his ‘own liturgy’ in an
empty church vestibule, ‘lit scarlet by dawn’ [в алом от зари притворе/Свою
обедню отслужу], Losev sings in a choir and even serves as a bell-ringer in an
actual church.43 The religious stratum of Losev’s world view remains, of course,
latent in the 1970s but its hidden presence is the only thing that assures, its
philosophical elaboration notwithstanding, the coherence of his theory of the
symbol even at that time and even under those circumstances. The scope of

40
‘Музыкальные драмы Р. Вагнера, Мусоргского и Римского-Корсакова,
музыкальные поэмы и симфонии Скрябина, “Буревестник” Горького – все эти и
необозримое множество других художественных произведений с начала до конца
полны самыми разнообразными символами.’ Ibid., p. 169.
41
‘Эти символы, насыщенные огромной общественно-политической и
даже вообще социально-исторической силой, являются либо пророчеством, либо
подведением итогов величайших человеческих катастроф и демонстрируют собою
тончайшие и острейшие инструменты для ориентации в этих катастрофах, а также
методы их преодоления.’ Ibid.
42
Losev, ‘Problema Rikharda Vagnera’, p. 106.
43
Quotations from Blok’s unfinished Vozmezdiye [Retribution]; see Aleksandr Blok,
Sobraniye sochineniy v shesti tomakh [Collected works in six volumes] (Moscow, 1971),
vol. 3, p. 192, my emphasis.
 Prophecy of a Revolution 87

this chapter prevents me from presenting sufficient proof of this claim and such
proof must be left till another occasion.
It is precisely the distinction between poetry, operatic performance, on the one
hand, and myth and ritual, on the other, that highlights one detail, very important
for Losev’s explanation of Wagner’s myths. For no matter how far the images of
Der Ring may be identified with ‘substantial actuality’, they remain nonetheless
images of the opera theatre and never become reality (hence the persistent ‘as ifs’
in Losev’s language on the question). In other words, it must be emphasised that,
despite ‘the substantial identification’ of the Wagnerian artistic images with those
realities that they point to (the power of the capital, contract relations based on
violence and on a violent assertion of individual will and, generally, unbridled
voluntaristic individualism), they still remain artistic images and, in an important
sense, objects of disinterested contemplation.
Thus Losev’s interpretation of Wagner, based as it is on his theory of the
symbol, uncovers an intriguing, multi-layered and dynamic picture of Wagner’s
symbolism. We see artistic images that are generalised to such an extent that
they become myths. But these myths, in turn, serve as material for artistic, i.e.,
ultimately aesthetic symbolism. And yet, according to Losev, things to do not
stop there. This artistic-mythological world appeals, prophesies and calls upon
us to plunge into the broadest range of activities, from innermost subjective
insights to world-historical movements. Wagner cries, Losev repeats over
and over, about the most fundamental injustice lying at the deepest sources of
the existing order of things, and about the impending inevitable, catastrophic
collapse of this world order. His relinquishing of the world built by means of
Wotan’s spear reaches immeasurably farther than all socialist, Marxist and
liberal-bourgeois reproaches levelled at this world. This criticism goes to those
foundations of the world outlook that produce, Losev argues, both capitalism
and liberal bourgeois ideology (which appears to be opposed to it) – and, by
implication, I might add, even socialism and Marxism themselves, especially in
their imperialist, Soviet refraction.44 Unbridled voluntaristic individualism is the
basis of all these doctrines and the demise of this individualism is, according to
Losev, what Wagner preaches in his Ring.

Lacunae

It is impossible to discuss Wagner today without reference to his anti-Semitism.

In his foreword to a recent edition of Adorno’s essay In Search of Wagner Slavoj
Žižek intimates that this subject has come to dominate the current academic

44
The deep affinity between the ideologies of capitalism and communism was
formulated by Losev already in the 1920s as one of his basic convictions. For obvious
reasons it could not openly surface in his writings after 1930.
88 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

discussion of the composer’s life and work, perhaps even to a fault.45 Against
this background the manner that Soviet authors adopted for addressing this
unsavoury side of the composer’s persona looks like avoiding the subject. Losev,
at any rate, eschews any direct reference to it altogether and the only rubric under
which it may be implicitly subsumed in his discussion is nationalism and racism.
He does mention Wagner’s essay Judaism in Music in his polemic with Gruber,
but does not dwell on it.46 Instead, he uncompromisingly upholds Wagner as an
anti-nationalist and anti-racist. ‘Nationalism and racism’, he writes, ‘are not the
love of one’s own nation and race, but the desire to annihilate any nation and
any race other than one’s own.’47 Wagner was not guilty, according to Losev,
of such a desire but was rather someone who exercised his legitimate right to
‘love one’s own tribe, folk, state and nation’ [любить свое племя, свой народ,
свое государство, свою нацию]. These remarks were made as part of Losev’s
defence of Wagner against accusations of being a reactionary. Subsuming anti-
Semitism under the general umbrella of reactionary politics was not uncommon
in Soviet literature. Gozenpud, for example, makes a mere passing remark to the
‘reactionary forces that attempted to use the great composer’s legacy for their
own purposes, falsifying the meaning of his ideas’ [реакционные силы, которые
пытались использовать наследие композитора в своих собственных целях,
фальсифицируя его идеи]. The conversation then moves to National Socialism
and to a quick denial that Wagner was ever ‘the singer of Blut und Boden [blood
and soil]’ [(не был) певцом Blut und Boden (крови и почвы)], which was also
more or less Losev’s strategy.48 Before turning to the subject of Wagner as a proto-
Nazi it must be noted here that failure to address the composer’s anti-Semitism is
the weakest spot in Losev’s engagement with his legacy.
Losev does not mention Adorno and in the texts discussed in this chapter there
are no direct indications that he was familiar with the German philosopher’s works
on Wagner.49 Still Losev’s replies to various criticisms levelled at Wagner can
serve as an indication of his attitude to the concerns expressed, among others,
by Adorno. Here belongs, for example, Adorno’s accusation that Wagner’s
operatic mythology advances the kind of collectivity that oppresses the critically

45
Slavoj Žižek, ‘Foreword’, in Theodor Adorno, In Search of Wagner, trans. Rodney
Livingstone (London and New York, 2005), p. xxvii. The bulk of Žižek’s discussion is
devoted to showing how Wagner’s anti-Semitism was bound up with his anti-capitalist
stance.
46
Losev, ‘Problema Rikharda Vagnera’, p. 120.
47
‘Национализм и расизм не есть любовь к своей нации и расе, а стремление
уничтожить всякую нацию и расу кроме своей.’ Ibid., p. 152.
48
Gozenpud, Rikhard Vagner, p. 6.
49
The general bibliography of the Voprosï estetiki issue where ‘The Problem of
Richard Wagner’ was published includes references to several editions of Adorno’s works
(p. 325).
 Prophecy of a Revolution 89

thinking individual.50 In response to such criticism Losev speaks of ‘illegitimate

individualism’ [незаконно индивидуальное] and points out that ‘not all heroism
and not all individual freedom are useful, rational and progressive’.51 He calls
‘petty bourgeois’ the view that ‘all personal and all singular things are necessarily
infallible, necessarily untouchable and that, if universal actuality gains the upper
hand over personal heroism, it is necessarily reactionary’. Thus the treatment of
the early figure of Siegfried as revolutionary and of the Götterdämmerung as a
‘reactionary’ work is an example of ‘petty-bourgeois aesthetics and philistine,
complacent philosophy’.52 Not everything in these remarks applies to Adorno, who
was by no means a complacent philistine; but the need to distinguish justified from
‘illegitimate’ individualism and, correspondingly, the justified and progressive
forms of collectivism from its oppressive and reactionary manifestations, seems
incontrovertible. And according to Losev, Der Ring advances a nuanced and
sympathetic, but ultimately merciless critique of precisely the illegitimate, self-
asserting individualism, which strongly implies that the kind of universal actuality
that makes it perish does not oppress legitimate and historically justified personal
freedom. While Der Ring offers no depiction of this genuine freedom, it is vaguely
hinted at in the figure of humanity looking at the ashes of Valhalla. ‘At the end of
the Götterdämmerung’, writes Losev, ‘the earth remains in place and with it human
beings, and the Rhine. It means that Wagner thinks of human existence apart from
the gods and heroes … as fully real and outside the supernatural individualistic
bourgeois culture.’53
In conjunction with this, Losev goes on to say, ‘one cannot marvel enough at the
historic insanity and prodigious madness that led the German Nazis to appropriate
Wagner as their inalienable property and to make him their prophet, precursor
and even leader.’54 If someone chooses Wotan or Siegfried as one’s precursors,
Losev exclaims in exasperation, he must also find in Wagner the prophecy of just
retribution and one’s own pathetic, wretched death.55 Moreover, Losev believed

50
Adorno, In Search of Wagner, chapter on ‘Myth’, pp. 103–18.
51
‘… не всякий героизм и не всякая свобода личности полезны, целесообразны
и обладают передовым характером.’ Losev, ‘Problema Rikharda Vagnera’, p. 193.
52
‘… мелкобуржуазной эстетики, мещанской самодовольной философии.’ Ibid.,
pp. 193–4.
53
‘В конце “Гибели богов” остаются на месте и земля, и люди на этой земле,
и Рейн. Значит, Вагнер мыслит себе человеческую жизнь вне изображенных им
слишком индивидуалистических богов и героев. Значит, хотя бы негативно, у
Вагнера остается вполне реальной человеческая жизнь и вне сверхъестественной
индивидуалистической буржуазной культуры.’ Ibid., p. 190.
54
‘Невозможно надивиться тому, в силу какого исторического
умопомешательства и в силу какого помрачения мысли немецкие нацисты присвоили
себе Вагнера в виде неотъемлемой собственности и пытались сделать его своим
пророком, своим предтечей и даже вождем.’ Ibid., p. 191.
55
Ibid.
90 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

that in his treatment of traditional Germanic mythology Wagner went beyond

nationalism and even ‘annihilated any possibility’ of using its heroes and gods for
nationalistic purposes; he transformed Germanic figures into ‘universal human
heroes, namely, the heroes of a perishing culture and individualistic injustice
facing an objectively evolving actuality that is both cosmic and historical’.56
To make the last but not the least point: Adorno did not deny the universality
of Wagner’s images, but he also noted what Losev tried hard to avoid talking
about – romantic individualism in the composer’s own persona. This, too, is a
weaker aspect of Losev’s treatment, for Wagner’s inescapable and irrepressible
romanticism compromises, as Adorno correctly pointed out, the composer’s
dreams about a new, non-individualistic humanity and, more specifically, about a
genuinely folk work of art, the Gesamtkunstwerk.57 Wagner’s gigantic but single-
handed effort is a monument, among other things, to his aspirations precisely as
a romantic genius. It may have been historically conditioned to be such but his
oeuvre bears the indelible mark of being the product of a singular creative ego – a
mark that must be acknowledged in a discussion of art’s past, present and future
‘remaking of actuality’.

Remaking Actuality

The most general aesthetic thesis in all three essays is that art is a life-transforming
activity: that is how, according to Losev, Wagner understood the ultimate
purpose of his Gesamtkunstwerk and that is also the main thrust of Losev’s own
doctrine of the symbol. Further, the life-transforming function of art, for both
Wagner and Losev, far transcends the familiar notion of art as an instrument of
moral indoctrination, as well as its commonplace twentieth-century version, art
as a weapon in ideological power struggles. In Wagner Losev saw an artistic-
philosophical ally to his argument against these reductionist approaches – as
reductionist as he finds any formalist conception of art. What Losev values most
in Wagner is the conviction that art is capable of transforming human existence
at far more fundamental levels than those reached by political, ideological and
generally moral messages.
Using the relative weakening of ideological controls in the wake of Nikita
Khrushchev’s renunciation of Stalinism, Losev jumped at the opportunity to
reintroduce into the Russian intellectual discourse the ideas and themes that he
had begun to develop as a junior member of the early twentieth-century symbolist

56
‘… уничтожил всякую возможность [сделать с их помощью националистические
выводы] … общечеловеческих героев, а именно – героев гибнущей культуры и
героев индивидуалистической неправды перед лицом объективно развивающейся
действительности – и космической и исторической.’ Ibid., p. 192.
57
Adorno, In Search of Wagner, chapter on ‘Music Drama’, pp. 86–102. Adorno’s
critique of Wagner, I should note in passing, is highly problematic in its own ways.
 Prophecy of a Revolution 91

movement. Banished from the Russian cultural space for several turbulent decades,
these themes and ideas were nonetheless preserved and, once they re-emerged,
became an important thread of continuity in the Russian history of ideas. But the
significance of Losev’s interpretation of Wagner in conjunction with his theory of
the symbol goes far beyond historical matters. What is much more poignant about
it is that it still poses a challenge to today’s aesthetic thought, mired as the latter
is in its own inability to overcome the divide between moralism and aestheticism.
The former has triumphed, especially as far as postmodern theory is concerned,
which is occupied exclusively with art’s ideological functions and resents any
implication of art’s autonomy. Aesthetic formalism has been intimidated into
a relative silence by its ideologically minded enemies, but is far from defunct
and still constitutes a palpable presence in arts scholarship. Those of us who find
neither alternative particularly appealing must face such a basic challenge as even
finding a language that would allow us to articulate a vision of art as at once
distinct from and intimately connected to all other important human pursuits, to
frame art’s poiesis as at once unique in the way it addresses human existence
and praxis, and is inextricably a part of them. Losev’s philosophical aspirations,
for which he recruited Wagner’s support, point exactly in this direction and are a
contribution to the quest for such a vision of art’s future.
This page has been left blank intentionally
 Chapter 5
‘The great little man’: Dvořák and Wagner1
Jan Smaczny

Wagner and Prague

Some of the greatest romantic composers found Prague an intoxicating place. Even
before the grand nineteenth-century edifices of the national revival, notably the
National Theatre, and the Art Nouveau embellishments of the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, were built in key locations near the river, Prague was a
very beautiful city. Berlioz, on arriving in the city in 1846 to conduct a concert in
the hall on Žofín (Sophia) Island, penned a near prose poem about the view from
the castle height with its ‘torrent of houses tumbling to the Moldau and, below, the
river making its way majestically through the town’.2 Reminiscing about his teens
nearly 20 years earlier, Wagner wrote that the ‘antique splendour and beauty of the
incomparable city of Prague became indelibly stamped on my fancy’.3
While Prague was unquestionably lovely, having built its grandeur across an
unmatchable landscape for nearly nine centuries, it was not, in the early decades of
the nineteenth century, a city where musicians and composers were likely to make
their fortunes. Mozart’s association with the city, notably with the commissioning
and premiere of Don Giovanni on 29 October 1787, coincided with a quickening
of Prague’s musical pulse, to a large extent prompted by an enthusiasm for Italian
opera and the building in the Fruit Market of the 1,000-seat Nationaltheater (later
Estates Theatre; hereafter German Theatre) by Count Franz Anton Nostitz, which
opened its doors on 21 April 1783. The early years of the nineteenth century saw
musical life fading somewhat. The abolition of religious orders by Josef II in 1773,
including the expulsion from the empire of the Jesuits, removed a vital source of
musical education4 and composers seemed locked into pallid imitations of Mozart

1
The quotation is adapted from an interview with Dvořák given to Paul Pry of The
Sunday Times, 10 May 1885, p. 6. The complete interview is reprinted in an appendix to
David Beveridge (ed.), Rethinking Dvořák: Views from Five Countries (Oxford, 1966), pp.
281–8. The original version of the quotation is given below (see footnote 28).
2
Hector Berlioz, The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz, trans. David Cairns (London,
1969), p. 482.
3
Richard Wagner, My Life by Richard Wagner [authorised translation] (London,
1911), p. 19 (hereafter My Life).
4
Falling standards in church music eventually prompted a member of the noble
Schwarzenberg family to found the Prague Organ School in 1830.
94 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

for decades after his death. Carl Maria von Weber’s tenure as musical director of
the German Theatre from 1813 alleviated this torpor, but it soon returned after
he left for Berlin in 1816. Nevertheless, Prague remained a regular staging post
for performers on their trek across the concert halls of Europe. During the last 20
years of his life, Jan Václav Křtitel Tomášek (1774–1850) proved something of
a nexus for musical life. Described by his pupil, Eduard Hanslick, as the ‘music-
Pope or music Dalai Lama of Prague’,5 obeisance was duly made to him by visiting
musicians of note including Berlioz, Paganini, Clara Schumann and, in the autumn
of 1834, Wagner.6
In 1826 Wagner’s family had followed his sister Rosalie to Prague where she
was employed as an actress. Although the 13-year-old Richard stayed in Dresden
for the sake of his education, he made a number of visits to Prague and according
to My Life was much charmed by the experience, citing such attractions as:

The foreign nationality, the broken German of the people, the peculiar headgear
of the women, the native wines, the harp-girls and musicians, and finally, the
ever present signs of Catholicism, its numerous chapels and shrines, all produced
on me a strangely exhilarating impression.7

During his visit of 1834, he made the acquaintance of the veteran director of
the Prague Conservatory, Dionys Weber (1766–1842), who gave a performance
with a student orchestra of Wagner’s Symphony in C major composed two years
before.8 Weber, who as a boy had met Mozart and heard a number of his Prague
performances, was able to advise Wagner on tempi in Mozart’s operas.9
Wagner was also closely associated with Weber’s successor as director of the
Conservatory, Jan Kittl (1806–68), whom he first met during the visit of 1834.
Kittl’s musical instincts were a good deal more radical than the ultra-conservative
Weber; he was on friendly terms with Liszt and Berlioz, and had a clear sympathy
for their brand of romanticism as well as being a leading figure in facilitating
concerts of new repertoire.10 In 1846, Wagner passed on to him his libretto of
Bianca und Giuseppe, originally written for Karl Reissiger. The opera was staged
in Prague’s German Theatre on 19 February 1848, according to Wagner very
successfully.11 Kittl was also decisively influential in the Prague premieres of

5
‘der “Musikpapst” oder “Musik-Daleilama” von Prag’, in Eduard Hanslick, Aus
meinem Leben [From my life], ed. Peter Wapnewski (Kassel, 1987), p. 21.
6
See Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner, vol. 1: 1813–1848 (London,
1933), p. 100.
7
My Life, p. 19.
8
Ibid., p. 79; Newman, Richard Wagner, pp. 100–101.
9
Newman, Richard Wagner, p. 419.
10
See Jarmil Burghauser, Czech preface to Jan Bedřich Kittl, Symfonie Es Dur,
Lovecká [Hunting Symphony] (Prague, 1960).
11
My Life, p. 277.
 ‘The great little man’ 95

Tannhäuser (25 November 1854) and Lohengrin (23 February 1856), both in the
German Theatre, not least by permitting Conservatory students to augment the
theatre’s orchestra.12

Dvořák’s Early Exposure to Wagner

Dvořák arrived in Prague, to study at the Organ School, at the end of September
1857, a little over a year and a half after the German Theatre premiere of Lohengrin.
At this stage, his musical horizons were, by his own admission, decidedly limited.
In his interview to The Sunday Times, he painted a picture of a teenage musical
education dominated by provincial church music in which performances of Masses
by Cherubini, Haydn and Mozart were the exception rather than the rule.13 While
opportunities for hearing newer repertoire were still limited in Prague, they vastly
exceeded anything Dvořák had encountered up to this time. The composer spoke
enthusiastically of Josef Krejčí’s (1821–81) directorship of the Organ School.
Krejčí, at that time director of the choir of St James (Sv Jakub), one of the major
churches in the Old Town in Prague, gave Dvořák the opportunity to perform in
the choir and expanded other aspects of his musical knowledge:

Now it was that I first heard of Mozart, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn as

instrumental composers; previously, indeed, I had hardly known that the two
last-named existed … . The first real orchestral performance I ever heard – I
shall never forget it – was a rehearsal at the Conservatoire, when I contrived
somehow to slip in. The work performed was Beethoven’s ‘Choral’ symphony,
and the conductor was Spohr.14

Evidence that Dvořák was aware of specific influence on his early work is to
be gleaned from a letter written to Eusebius Mandyczewski of 7 January 1898.
Referring to his first string quartet (A major, B 8, 1862), he stated it was ‘in
the style of Mendelssohn and Beethoven and also Mozart’.15 In the next two
paragraphs Dvořák mentions the influence of Schumann on his second symphony

12
Through the 1850s to the 1870s the size of the orchestra in the German Theatre
was largely consistent and clearly inadequate for either opera by Wagner. The theatre’s
Almanac for 1862 indicates the following forces: 6 6 4 3 3; 2 2 2; 4 2 4; 1 2; harp (see
Jan Smaczny, ‘Alfred: Dvořák’s first operatic endeavour surveyed’, Journal of the Royal
Musical Association 115/1 (1990), p. 84).
13
The Sunday Times; see Beveridge, Rethinking Dvořák, p. 284.
14
The Sunday Times; see Beveridge, Rethinking Dvořák, p. 285. The concert to which
Dvořák refers took place on 9 July 1858.
15
The letter accompanied a list of works intended as an appendix for an essay about
the composer by František Václav Krejčí (‘Antonín Dvořák’ in Musikbuch aus Österreich,
II, Vienna–Leipzig, 1905). See Milan Kuna (ed.), Antonín Dvořák: korespondence a
96 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

(B flat major, B 12, 1865) and that of Wagner in an overture of 1870 and the
Symphony in E flat major (no. 3, B 34, 1873).16
Encapsulating the full nature of Wagner’s influence on Dvorak is no easy matter
since it ebbs and flows throughout his career and is often affected by the nature of
the genre, in particular opera, where it is adopted. Similarly, pinpointing Dvořák’s
exposure to Wagner’s music in performance in the late 1850s and 1860s, when
the young composer was at his most impressionable, is not a comprehensively
accurate science; it is also compounded by Dvořák’s less than reliable memory
and the unreferenced accounts of others. In an interview given to the Pall Mall
Gazette,17 for example, Dvořák claimed that he had heard Weber’s Der Freischütz
from the gallery of the German Theatre; in The Sunday Times interview, he
failed to get in to the performance at all.18 While there is no direct contemporary
evidence from Dvořák or his friends or associates that he ever attended any of the
Wagner operas given in the German Theatre during his first 12 years in Prague,19
there is Karel Hoffmeister’s claim made in 1924 (20 years after the composer’s
death) that ‘Mořic Anger remembered that Dvořák at this time [the 1860s] gladly
and frequently accompanied him to the German theatre, where Wagner’s operas
interested him immensely’.20
Indisputable experience of Wagner’s music, however, came in 1863.21
According to Wagner,22 the concert in February was arranged by Heinrich Porges
to help raise funds for a trip to St Petersburg where he was to conduct further
concerts. Press notices reveal there was already considerable anticipation in

dokumenty; korespondence odeslaná [Antonín Dvořák: correspondence and documents;

correspondence dispatched], vol. 4: 1896–1904 (Prague, 1995), pp. 112–14.
16
Ibid. Dvořák was referring to the Tragic Overture (Tragická ouvertura, B16a,
1870; published as Dramatische Ouverture by Simrock in 1912); the work originated as the
overture to Dvořák’s first, at that stage unknown, opera, Alfred (B 16, 1870). See Smaczny,
‘Alfred’.
17
13 October 1886; see Beveridge, Rethinking Dvořák, p. 291.
18
See Beveridge, Rethinking Dvořák, pp. 285–6.
19
Tannhäuser, premiered 25 November 1854; Lohengrin, premiered 23 February
1856; Der fliegende Holländer, premiered 7 September 1856; Rienzi, premiered 24
November 1859.
20
Taken from the translation of Karel Hoffmeister, Antonín Dvořák (Prague, 1924) by
Rosa Newmarch, Antonín Dvořák (London, 1928), p. 12.
21
Information supplied by Květ in his study of Dvořák’s youth (J.M. Květ, Mládí
Antonína Dvořáka [The youth of Antonín Dvořák] (Prague, 1943), pp. 98–9) that Dvořák
played in the Cecilia Society orchestra in a performance of Das Liebesmahl der Apostel
conducted by Antonín Apt on 27 February 1858; the mention of a performance of the finale
of Act III of Rienzi on 6 May (Květ, ibid.) appears to be erroneous (see University of
Cardiff, Prague Concerts Database, http://prague.cf.ac.uk; accessed 24 July 2012 ). Apt
conducted a performance of the finale of Act I of Rienzi on 17 January 1857 with the Cecilia
Society orchestra, but this was at least nine months before Dvořák arrived in Prague.
22
My Life, p. 862.
 ‘The great little man’ 97

Prague as early as the middle of January.23 While there appears to have been a
deal of uncertainty as to the final date of the concert in the Prague press, it was
given at noon on 8 February.24 Anticipation of the occasion was much advanced
not only by the various press notices, but by the fact that the orchestra comprised
both that of the German Theatre and also the smaller band from the recently
opened Czech Provisional Theatre25 (the first time the two orchestras were united
in a performance) as well as players from the Prague Conservatory.26 Wagner’s
statement that the event ‘was crowned with great success’27 was reflected in
enthusiastic press coverage. Dvořák’s memory of the occasion in his account to
The Sunday Times verged on the ecstatic:

I was perfectly crazy about him, and recollect following him as he walked along
the streets to get a chance now and again of seeing the great little man’s face.28

While there can be little doubt that Dvořák’s enthusiasm for Wagner’s music
was much advanced by the 1863 concert, the evidence of his musical influence
is sporadic until the end of the 1860s. A tendency to headline complex ninth-
related chords (notably bar 26 of the first movement of the second symphony)
and a startlingly obvious reference to Tannhäuser in the opening ritornello of the
first movement of the A major cello concerto (for cello and piano, B 10 – see
Example 5.1)29 suggest that Wagner’s musical language was far from integrated.
The works of 1865, Dvořák’s most productive year in the 1860s which saw the
composition of the first two symphonies, the A major cello concerto and the song-
cycle Cypřiše [Cypresses, B 11), while often displaying remarkable originality,
seem to build on pre-Wagnerian models. The three string quartets written toward

23
Both the newspaper Národní listy (14 January 1863) and the arts periodical Lumír
(15 January 1863) referred to plans for a ‘great concert’ in the hall on Žofín Island (Prague
Concerts Database, accessed 25 July 2012).
24
Ibid.
25
The Royal Provincial Czech Theatre (Královské zemské české divadlo, 1862–83,
the precursor of the Czech National Theatre), for the performance of plays and opera
exclusively in Czech, opened on 20 November 1862.
26
The programme comprised the Faust Overture, the entrance of the Mastersingers
(Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Act I scene 3), Pogner’s address (Die Meistersinger, Act I,
scene 3), the prelude to Die Meistersinger, the prelude to Tristan und Isolde, ‘Winterstürme’
(Act I, Die Walküre), overture to Tannhäuser. Apart from the Faust Overture, the prelude to
Tristan and the overture to Tannhäuser, all of the items were first performances in Prague.
Information derived from the Prague Concerts Database, accessed 25 July 2012.
27
My Life, p. 862.
28
The Sunday Times; see Beveridge, Rethinking Dvořák, p. 287.
29
Jarmil Burghauser and Karel Šolc (eds), Antonín Dvořák, Concerto in A major,
Violoncello and Piano, Dvorak complete edition (Prague, 1975), p. 4.
98 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

Example 5.1 Dvořák, Cello Concerto in A major (B 10), mvt I, bb. 119–27

the end of the 1860s and possibly into 187030 are typified by most commentators
as being influenced by Liszt and Wagner.31 Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B minor
may well have been the model for the E minor quartet which is also cast in a
single movement with a central Andante religioso. There is also a good deal of
‘Tristanesque’ colouring, but, as is often the case, the convenience of such labels
can conceal a great deal, in this case Dvořák’s remarkably advanced harmonic
imagination, which frequently pushes contemporary tonality to its limits.

Wagner and Dvořák’s First Two Operas

Most considerations of Dvořák’s first opera, Alfred (1870), to a German text,

take Šourek’s lead in assuming that the composer was intent on producing a
Music Drama.32 If this were the case, it is not supported by his choice of libretto,
Theodor Körner’s Alfred der Grosse of 1811. While its clear championing of

30
In B flat major, D major and E minor (B 17, 18 and 19). Burghauser does not give
firm dates for any of these three works, but postulates that they were probably written
between 1868 and December 1870; see Jarmil Burghauser, Antonín Dvořák: Thematický
katalog [Antonín Dvořák: thematic catalogue; hereafter BTC] (Prague, 1996), pp. 71–3.
31
See Otakar Šourek, Život a dílo Antonína Dvořáka [The life and works of Antonín
Dvořák] (4 vols, Prague, 1954–57), vol. 1, p. 110 f.; John Clapham, Antonín Dvořák:
Musician and Craftsman (London, 1966), pp. 160–63.
32
See Šourek, Dvořák: Život a dílo, vol. 1, p. 58. For an extended consideration of the
genesis and music of Alfred, see Smaczny, ‘Alfred’ and Jan Smaczny, ‘Dvořák and Alfred: a
first operatic endeavour surveyed’, in Jitka Brabcová and Jarmil Burghauser (eds), Antonín
Dvořák – Dramatik [Antonín Dvořák – The Dramatist] (Prague, 1994), pp. 23–49.
 ‘The great little man’ 99

patriotic struggle was in tune with the tastes of Czech opera audiences who had so
recently (1866) thrilled to Smetana’s Braniboři v Čechách [The Brandenburgers in
Bohemia], the conventions of the libretto, including its two-act structure, belong
to early nineteenth-century Singspiel. Körner’s clear demarcation of numbers
(chorus, recitative and aria etc.), a useful prop for a tyro opera composer, was for
the most part adopted by Dvořák. His one major intervention where the libretto
was concerned, however, might well be seen as an indication of more modernist
tendencies: at the end of Körner’s scene 5, which concludes with a chorus for
Danish soldiers just before a major change of scene, Dvořák brings his first act to
a conclusion, thus creating a three-act opera.33
The music of the score shows many affinities with Wagner, most particularly
the pre-Tristan works. Tannhäuser, in particular, seems to have supplied Dvořák
with suitable ammunition for characterization in a libretto which badly lacks any
real sense of confrontation. Tannhäuser himself seems to be the model for the
arrogant Danish prince, Harald. Homage almost becomes parody in Harald’s
‘Schlachtlied’ which is uncomfortably close to the start of ‘Freudig begrüssen wir
die edle Halle’, the start of the ‘Tournament of Song’ (Example 5.2).

Example 5.2 Dvořák, Alfred (B 16), Act I, scene 3, Harald’s ‘Schlachtlied’,

opening34

In similar fashion, the role of Alfred leans heavily on Wagner’s Wolfram.

Inevitably, there are tensions between Dvořák’s clear embrace of the Wagner
manner and the nature of the libretto. He relies, for example, to a far greater

33
There is also the consideration that Dvořák took full advantage of Körner’s
invitation to supply ‘ein charackteristischer Tanz’ [a characteristic dance] in Act I, scene 3
with a ballet of 245 bars.
34
Transcription from the autograph MS, p. 84.
100 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

extent than the pre-Tristan Wagner on accompanied recitative convention, and

his approach to motif could hardly be described as consistently leitmotivic.
Indeed, the recall in the third act of Alfred of the main melody of the duet between
Alwina and Harald from the first act has more in common with the reminiscence
of ‘Di quell’amor’ in La traviata.35 There is also tension between Dvořák’s
developing musical language and the pervasive use of Wagnerian coloration.
The first-act duet for Alwina and Harald was sufficiently consonant with his
style five years later for Dvořák to import it (transposed from A flat major to
G major) into the first act of the grand opera Vanda for the principal lovers,
Vanda and Slavoj. Indeed, the same duet from 1870 may well have provided the
model for the second-act love duet for Armida and Rinald in the composer’s last
opera, Armida (1904).36 In general terms, Alfred reveals Dvořák’s response to
Wagner to be a musical rather than an ideological one; there is no real sense in
which Alfred can be described as a Music Drama – the libretto alone would have
prevented this. Moreover, the lack of integration of the pre-Tristan Wagner style
is, in retrospect, a clear indication that Dvořák would later be able to adopt or
reject it as it suited him.
The Wagner manner, however, is rather more integrated in Dvořák’s second
opera, the comedy Král a uhlíř [The King and the Charcoal Burner].37 Dvořák
himself attested to Wagner’s influence in the somewhat chronologically garbled
account he gave to The Sunday Times:

Yes; one of my chief ambitions when I began to compose was to write an

opera. My first attempt was one called ‘König und Köhler’ [The King and the
Charcoal Burner]. The influence of Wagner was strongly shown in the harmony
and orchestration. I had just heard ‘Die Meistersinger’,38 and not long before
Richard Wagner had himself been in Prague.39

Dvořák’s view was echoed by his Provisional Theatre colleague, Adolf Čech (later
the first musical director of the National Theatre):

35
As the lead viola in the Provisional Theatre orchestra between 1862 and 1871,
Dvořák would have played in the first performance in the theatre of La traviata on 15 July
1868, not much more than a year before he began work on Alfred.
36
See Jan Smaczny, ‘Vanda and Armida, A Grand-Operatic Sisterhood’, in Beveridge,
Rethinking Dvořák, pp. 95–6.
37
For an extended consideration of the genesis, music and a comparison of both
versions of Král a uhlíř, see Jan Smaczny, ‘Král a uhlíř I and II’, in Brabcová and
Burghauser (eds), Antonín Dvořák – Dramatik, pp. 63–125.
38
The opera had its Prague premiere in German on 26 April 1871.
39
The Sunday Times; see Beveridge, Rethinking Dvořák, p. 287. Dvořák was
undoubtedly referring to Wagner’s visit in 1863, eight years before the completion of
the opera.
 ‘The great little man’ 101

Like every young composer of his day Dvořák clung to the example of Wagner
with his whole soul and endeavoured to emulate him. He took nothing less than
Die Meistersinger for his model.40

Unfortunately, as Dvořák himself admitted, the score was vastly beyond the
resources of the Provisional Theatre when it went into rehearsal in 1873:

The piano and choral rehearsals began. But with one assent all complained
that the music was too difficult. It was infinitely worse than Wagner. It was
original, clever, they said, but unsingable. Persuasion was useless: my opera
was abandoned.41

According to Čech, Smetana, who as musical director of the Provisional Theatre

at the time had accepted the work for performance, was of the view that: ‘This
is a serious work, full of gifted ideas, but I think it cannot be performed.’42 In
complexity, Král a uhlíř was as far beyond the resources of the Provisional
Theatre, as would have been Die Meistersinger had they attempted it. The
strenuous nature of the solo parts and the complexity of the ensembles (some with
chorus subdivided into as many as eight parts) clearly defeated the company’s
personnel.
Notwithstanding moments of startling individuality (notably the modally
inflected first chorus for the charcoal-burners in Act I and the conclusion of
the finale of the same act, which has an almost Sibelian quality), the score of
Král a uhlíř is much more consistently Wagnerian than that of Alfred. Taking
Die Meistersinger as a model drew Dvořák much closer to the ideology of
Music Drama than the Tannhäuser-influenced Alfred. Like Die Meistersinger,
there is little sense of Král a uhlíř being a hybrid, in part dependent on the
musical conventions of grand opera. The use of motif is more consistent than
in Alfred and Dvořák seems clearly to have grasped the symphonic potential of
motivic units. A clear example of this is the transformation of a four-note motif
associated with the hunters into an effective accompaniment to a new melody
(see Examples 5.3a and b).

40
‘Jako každý mladý skladatel v té době i Dvořák přilnul celou duší ku slohu
wagnerovskému a snažil se jej napodobiti. Zvolil si za vzor nic menšího nežli
‘Meistersingery’. Adolf Čech, Z mých divadelních pamětí [From my theatrical memories]
(Prague, 1903), p. 90.
41
The Sunday Times; see Beveridge, Rethinking Dvořák, p. 287.
42
‘Je to vážná prace, plná geniálních nápadů, ale myslím, že to k provozování
nedojde’. Čech, Z mých divadelních pamětí, p. 90. In fact, the opera has never been
performed complete; the full score used for the sole production in the twentieth century
(National Theatre, Prague, 28 May 1929, as part of a complete cycle of Dvořák’s operas
commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death) indicate that nearly a third of the
opera was cut.
102 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

Example 5.3a Dvořák, Král a uhlíř (B 21), hunters’ theme43

Example 5.3b Dvořák, Král a uhlíř (B 21), hunters’ theme developed texturally44

Dvořák’s complete resetting of the libretto of Král a uhlíř, made between April
and November 1874, should be seen less as a repudiation of Wagner than a
recognition of the realities of the performing resources of the Provisional Theatre.
He was also beginning to acquire an audience among the salons of Prague for
his songs and a much larger public after the hugely successful premiere of his
cantata Dědicové bílé hory [The Heirs of the White Mountain] on 9 March 1873.
Moreover, with his marriage to Anna Čermáková on 17 November 1873 and the
arrival of a son, Otakar, on 4 April 1874, there were clear domestic imperatives
for aiming at artistic success and developing a relationship with a local audience
that had very little appetite for the musically radical. The premiere of the new
version of Král a uhlíř on 24 November 1874 was a modest success. According
to a report in Hudební listy [Musical pages], Dvořák was personally applauded
after each act.45 The opera was given, in Provisional Theatre terms, a respectable
run of four performances (Bukovín, the first opera by Fibich to be staged in the
Provisional Theatre – premiered on 16 April 1874 – was given three times).
Critical opinion showed a surprising engagement with the issue of the work being
completely rewritten. After drawing attention to the work’s success, Ludevít
Procházka, a leading critic on the major Prague musical periodical, Dalibor,

43
Transcription from vocal score prepared for first performance in the National
Theatre in 1929 (Inventory no. 203), p. 5.
44
Ibid., p. 7.
45
Hudební listy, 26 November 1874.
 ‘The great little man’ 103

described the contrast between the rehearsals of the original version of the opera
and the new version in which soloists and orchestra were, apparently, ‘delighted’
with their parts.46 There was also an attempt to enlist Dvořák as a player in
the national agenda for Czech opera with talk of a ‘pure Czech art’. While the
second version of Král a uhlíř owes a debt to Smetana’s comic manner, it also
leans fairly heavily on two popular German stalwarts of the Provisional Theatre
repertoire, Weber’s Der Freischütz and Lortzing’s Zar und Zimmermann, both of
which would have been very familiar to Dvořák from his days as an orchestral
player.47
If the ideological aspect of Wagnerian Music Drama had passed with the
second version of Král a uhlíř, elements of Wagner’s legacy remained. The
choral and vocal writing in the opera do reflect a new-found simplicity, but some
of the orchestral music is tinged by Wagner, notably in the prelude to the first
chorus, in which the superimposition of triads over a pedal leads to a distinctly
Wagnerian-sounding dominant ninth. Another aspect of Dvořák’s experience
with the first version that informs the second is its through-composed nature.
While not attempting the seamlessness of Music Drama superimposed onto
what is fundamentally a number opera libretto, Dvořák goes beyond Smetana’s
first two comedies, Prodaná nevěsta [The Bartered Bride] and Dvě vdovy [The
Two Widows], both of which started life effectively as Singspiele and which
later acquired a form of string accompanied ‘secco’ recitative. Dvořák draws the
numbers together with an almost symphonic instinct that anticipates by almost
exactly two years Smetana’s first, consciously through-composed comic opera,
Hubička [The Kiss; premiered in the Provisional Theatre on 7 November 1876].

Dvořák’s Early Maturity

For Dvořák in the early to mid 1870s, on the verge of what is usually accepted
as his first musical maturity, Wagner’s influence had retreated from being an
ideological model towards a means of orchestral and harmonic colouring. Both
these features are at their clearest in the slow movements of the Third (Op. 10, B
34; 1873, revised 1887 and 1889) and Fourth (Op. 13, B 41; 1874, revised 1887 and
1888) Symphonies. In the case of the Third, the standard orchestra is augmented
by cor Anglais and, in the Adagio molto, tempo di marcia, the harp; the even more
march-like central section of this movement is almost a homage to Tannhäuser.
Although the Fourth Symphony moves away from the formal audacity of the outer
movements of the Third, Tannhäuser is also a presence in its Andante sostenuto e
molto cantabile whose main theme, announced soberly in clarinets, bassoons and

46
Dalibor, 1–21 December 1874, p. 398.
47
Der Freischütz was given 49 times between 1862 and 1883; Zar und Zimmermann
was given 22 times between 1863 and 1882. See Jan Smaczny, The Daily Repertoire of the
Prague Provisional Theatre (Prague, 1994).
104 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

trombones, comes very close to the timbre, harmony and melodic character of the
opening of the overture to Tannhäuser.
In reality, aspects of Wagner’s style, and to an extent, his operatic ideology,
remained a part of Dvořák’s expanding musical vocabulary for the rest of his
career.48 ‘Neo-classical’ ventures such as the String and Wind Serenades (Opp. 22
and 44, B 52 and B 77), nationally inflected works such as the Moravian Duets (Op.
38, B 79) and first set of Slavonic Dances (Op. 46, B 78), and the greater formal
orthodoxy of such works as the Fifth Symphony (Op. 76, B 54, 1875 revised 1887)
and the Piano Concerto (Op. 33, B 63) are indicative of a major change in stylistic
direction from the mid 1870s onward.49 Nevertheless, the Wagnerian impulse has
not entirely disappeared. In many ways, the Fifth Symphony sums up many of the
characteristics of Dvořák’s new stylistic direction: formal clarity (even if complete
orthodoxy is challenged by a bridge passage between the slow movement and
scherzo, and a finale that begins in the mediant), and a clear nod in the direction of
national colouring with a subtle evocation of bagpipe texture at the beginning of the
first movement and balanced phrases in the scherzo that unmistakably anticipate
the first set of Slavonic Dances composed three years later. In the recapitulation of
the finale, however, between bb. 241 and 247, Dvořák steps away from his more
conventional style to introduce a sequence that appears almost entirely Wagnerian in
colour.50 While certainly ear-catching, it seems far from being an aberration.
Of a similar nature, though given its context, rather more puzzling, is a passage
from the penultimate movement, ‘Inflammatus’, of the Stabat Mater. Almost
certainly prompted by the death of his daughter, Josefa, on 21 September 1875,
only three days after her birth, the Stabat Mater was sketched between 19 February
and 7 May 1876 (see BTC, p. 151). Dvořák then set the work aside, but returned
to complete it by adding three movements (nos. 5, 6 and 7) and orchestrating the
whole in the autumn of 1877, once again prompted by domestic tragedy in the
shape of the deaths of his remaining children, Růžena and Otakar.51 Influences
on the work range widely, from Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis in the finale to the
prelude to Verdi’s La traviata in the more operatic subsidiary material of the first
movement. Equally important is Dvořák’s clear adherence to Baroque conventions
in many places. This last is hardly surprising: Dvořák often had recourse to figured
bass when sketching, from the First Symphony through to as late as his last opera,
Armida. The nature of his musical education in the Prague Organ School, where

48
For an alternative view of Wagner’s presence in Dvořák’s mature style, see Jarmila
Gabrielová, ‘Antonín Dvořák and Richard Wagner’, Muzikologija 6 (2006), pp. 305–16.
49
A number of contributory factors led to the crystallization of Dvořák’s style at
this stage, including growing audience awareness of his music and not least, in 1875, the
winning of the Austrian state prize for poor artists.
50
Clapham typifies it as faintly echoing ‘some of the harmonies of Wagner’s “Magic
Sleep” motif, from Die Walküre’; see Clapham, Antonín Dvořák, p. 70.
51
For more details concerning the genesis of the Stabat Mater see Jan Kachlík and
Miroslav Srnka (eds), Dvořák: Stabat Mater (Prague, 2004), pp. vi–vii.
 ‘The great little man’ 105

Example 5.4 Dvořák, Stabat Mater (B 71), ‘Inflammatus’, bb. 66–9

Mattheson’s Der vollkommene Capellmeister was still studied, was in essence

little different from that of an eighteenth-century composer. Moreover, in Prague
in the 1860s Dvořák had abundant access to pre-classical music in which the
repertoire had a significant concentration of music by Johann Sebastian Bach.52

52
For a more extensive consideration of Dvořák and early repertoires see Jan
Smaczny, ‘Dr Dvořák steps off his world of baroque certainty’, in Jarmila Gabrielová and
Jan Kachlík (eds), The Work of Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904): Aspects of Composition –
Problems of Editing – Reception (Prague, 2007), pp. 310–23.
106 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

An example of Baroque convention in the Stabat Mater may be observed as early

as the opening of the epic first movement with its descending chromatic phrases of
mourning. The ‘Inflammatus’ was among the original seven movements composed
in 1876 and is one of Dvořák’s closest approaches to Baroque convention. In this
movement it is possible to identify techniques such as walking bass, sequence,
melodic figuration of decidedly Baroque cut and an extended, ecstatic tierce de
Picardie; this, the only solo aria in the entire work, is based on a ritornello structure
with the first five bars recurring almost exactly three times with a modified fourth
appearance. Notwithstanding this celebration of orthodoxy, shortly before the end
Dvořák inserts four bars of ardent Wagnerian chromatics (bb. 66–9) to the words
‘confoveri gratia’ [sheltered by his grace]. The association of these words with
Wagnerian harmony may be suggestive, but equally important is that the manner
can appear in an apparently unlikely context (Example 5.4).53

Wagner, Smetana and Fibich

The anticipation and reception of Wagner’s 1863 concert indicates a high level
of enthusiasm for the composer’s music in Prague. However, his operas were not
performed in Czech in the Provisional Theatre and only appeared in the Czech
National Theatre as late as 1885 with a production of Lohengrin given under the
directorship of the highly influential František Šubert.54 While Wagner operas
would have been a severe test for the resources of the Provisional Theatre,55 there
were also ideological reasons why he was not performed there. Smetana was an
admirer of Wagner’s music,56 even if he felt distinctly wary of his personality
and never met him.57 He also remained fundamentally modernist in his approach
to opera; while turning down a five-act libretto based on the ‘wandering Jew’,

53
Otakar Šourek (ed.), Antonín Dvořák, Stabat Mater, Dvorak complete edition vocal
score, piano arr. by Karel Šolc (Prague, 1973), pp. 124–5.
54
Šubert did much to expand the repertoire of the National Theatre and developed
sensible working practices with the management of the German Theatre through the 1890s;
see John Tyrrell, Czech Opera (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 48–9. 1885 also saw the appointment
of the great Wagner adherent Angelo Neumann as director of the German Theatre where he
remained in post until his death in 1910.
55
When the Provisional Theatre opened in 1862 its orchestra comprised 6 6 4 3 3; 2 2
2 2; 4 2; 1 2; harp. In the early 1870s the composition was exactly the same; See Smaczny,
‘Alfred’, p. 84.
56
In 1870 he travelled to Munich to see Die Walküre twice and Das Rheingold; see
letters (12 July 1870 and 22 July 1870) to his second wife, Bettina, referred to in Olga
Mojžíšová and Milan Pospíšil, Bedřich Smetana a jeho korespondence [Bedřich Smetana
and his correspondence] (Prague, 2011), pp. 77–8.
57
See letter to Karel Bendl (24 July 1875) referred to in Mojžíšová and Pospíšil,
Bedřich Smetana a jeho korespondence, p. 40.
 ‘The great little man’ 107

Ahasver [Ahasuer], he added that ‘only three-act opera can be justified and
countenanced’.58 Nevertheless, in the febrile and vindictive critical atmosphere
attendant on the development of a national opera in Prague in the 1860s and
1870s, accusations of Wagnerism as a danger to the national agenda were rife
and often decidedly ill-considered: as John Tyrrell has pointed out, even Blodek’s
innocent, light one-act comedy V studni [In the well] could attract an accusation of
Wagnerism owing to its being ‘thickly orchestrated’ or having ‘longer orchestral
interludes’.59
A focus for criticisms of rampant Wagnerism, where Smetana was concerned,
was over his third opera, Dalibor (premiered 16 May1868). For critics determined
to see Wagner in its pages, the use of thematic transformation and the occasional
adopting of Wagnerian harmony was excuse enough. The most virulent criticism
– prompted as much by personal and professional antipathy toward Smetana –
came from František Pivoda, who accused him of extreme Wagnerism and even
suggested renaming the opera ‘Dalibor Wagner’!60 Smetana’s closest approach to
Wagner was in fact a fairly brazen quotation of the start of Das Rheingold at the
opening of his melodrama-setting of Goethe’s Der Fischer [Rybář] as part of a
series of tableaux vivants staged on 12 April 1869 in order to raise funds for the
completion of St Vitus Cathedral.61
For all the highly charged nature of the exchanges between Smetana, Pivoda
and various other critics, they indicate more about the nature of infighting
concerning the personalities involved than about the extent to which Wagner
had penetrated the Czech national revival. The key figures in attempting to
confront the principles of Music Drama and, indeed, to find a place for it in the
developing traditions of Czech opera, were Zdeněk Fibich (1850–1900) and
Otakar Hostinský (1847–1910). Their partnership over Nevěsta Messinská [The
Bride of Messina] brought together two of the most formidable intellects of the
Czech national revival. Fibich’s second opera, Blaník (premiered 25 November
1881), was already showing Wagnerian affinities, including the use of a ‘coherent
system of motifs’.62 Fibich’s enthusiasm for theatrical experiment appealed greatly

58
‘jen tříakotová opera odůvodniti a schváliti’. Letter to J.V. Frič, 10 February 1879,
in František Bartoš (ed.), Smetana ve vzpomínkách a dopisech [Smetana in reminiscences
and letters] (Prague, 1939), p. 154.
59
Tyrrell, Czech Opera, p. 213.
60
See John Clapham, ‘The Smetana–Pivoda Controversy’, Music & Letters, 52/4
(1971), p. 355. For a succinct account of the background to this aggravated spat, see Tyrrell,
Czech Opera, pp. 32, 34–5.
61
Since Das Rheingold was not premiered until 22 September 1869, five months after
Rybář, Smetana must have based his work on the vocal score of Wagner’s opera, published
in 1861.
62
See Jan Smaczny, ‘The Operas and Melodramas of Zdenĕk Fibich’, Proceedings
of the Royal Musical Association 109 (1982–83), p. 126. For a more recent consideration
of Fibich’s operas, focused mainly on his works from the 1890s, see Jiří Kopecký, Opery
108 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

to Hostinský, who believed fundamentally in aesthetic experiment and also in a

potential role for Wagner in the Czech national revival.63 The result, premiered on
23 March 1884 in the new National Theatre, was Nevěsta Messinská to a libretto
by Hostinský based on Schiller’s Die Braut von Messina. Schiller’s revival of the
Ancient Greek chorus and rigorous observation of the dramatic unities seemed
ideal material for a modern form of Czech Music Drama. The score contains a
number of personal motifs, in addition to a ‘fate’ motif heard at the start, which are
developed symphonically. Reflecting the intentions of Hostinský, Fibich evolved
‘a simple manner of declamation without excessive melodic elaboration’.64 The
result was unchallengeably high-minded and admired by certain critics,65 but
almost completely failed to win an audience among the Czechs.66
Notwithstanding his disappointment and disillusion at the public reception of
Nevěsta Messinská, Fibich did not give up on his Wagnerian project. Once again,
Hostinský was instrumental in prompting him, in an article published in 1885
entitled ‘O melodramatu’ [Concerning melodrama] (Lumír, iv–v, 1885, pp. 55–7
and 71–4). His stated view was that melodrama was a viable theatrical form, but
conceded that a full five-act melodrama was unlikely to be composed. Fibich had
revived Georg [Jiří] Benda’s melodramas Ariadne and Medea in the Provisional
Theatre on their centenary in December 1875, and went on to compose a number
of small-scale melodramas in the 1880s. He later persuaded the writer Jaroslav
Vrchlický to add two more four-act dramas to his existing drama, Smrt Hippodamie
[The death of Hippodamie], to create a cycle of three dramas entitled Hippodamie,
premiered separately in the National Theatre in 1890 and 1891.67 In many ways,
full-scale melodrama was viewed by Fibich and Hostinský as the opportunity to
realize Wagner’s theories most effectively. While the orchestra developed the
drama’s psychological background through a symphonically handled system of
leitmotifs, the spoken dialogue would see that the mechanics of the drama were

Zdeňka Fibicha z devadesátých let 19. století [The operas of Zdenĕk Fibich from the last
decade of the nineteenth century] (Olomouc, 2008).
63
See two key articles by Otakar Hostinský, ‘O estetice experimentální’ [Concerning
aesthetic experiment], Česká mysl (1900), pp. 3-15, and ‘Wagnerianismus a česká národní
opera’ [Wagnerianism and Czech national opera], Hudební listy 1 (1870), nos. 5, 6, 8, 11,
12.
64
Smaczny, ‘The Operas and Melodramas of Zdenĕk Fibich’, p. 127.
65
Notably Emil Chvála; see ibid., p. 128.
66
Nevěsta Messinská was given five times in 1884, two in 1885 and nine in 1888.
While this was far from being a disaster, it was, by comparison with Dvořák’s near-
contemporary Dimitrij (premiered in 1882), which ran to 66 performances between 1882
and 1902, hardly a stellar success; figures derived from V.A.J. Hornové, Česká zpĕvohra
[Czech opera] (Prague, 1903), pp. 332–4.
67
Námluvy Pelopovy [The courtship of Pelops, 21 February 1890]; Smír Tantalův
[The atonement of Tantalus, 2 June 1891]; Smrt Hippodamie [The death of Hippodamia, 8
November 1891].
 ‘The great little man’ 109

delivered with unrivalled clarity. His mistress, Aněžka Schulzová – later also the
librettist of three of his operas – opined that in melodrama only 20 per cent of
the words were lost as opposed to 80 per cent in sung Music Drama.68 Even apart
from the Wagnerian nature of the methods, the score of Hippodamie often closely
approaches the musical language of Der Ring.

Wagner and Dvořák in the 1880s

Against this background, Dvořák, in some ways, seems a rather isolated figure.
Although he completed six operas in the 1870s he did not develop any effective
or consistent relationships with librettists of quality, unlike Smetana and Fibich.
While far from intellectually inert, Dvořák made no attempt to develop an operatic
ideology at any stage in his career. His two serious operas from the 1870s and
1880s were both conventional grand operas: Vanda (premiered 17 April 1876)
and Dimitrij (premiered 8 October 1882). Curiously enough, the use of an old-
fashioned format, in both cases complete with elaborate set pieces, double choruses
and ballets, did not prevent the occasional adoption of Wagnerian methods and
colouring. In both operas personal motifs are used and often elaborated, alongside
poignant reminiscence, in a symphonic manner. Gounod’s Faust, the most
frequently performed non-Czech opera in the Provisional Theatre,69 is certainly
part of the stylistic background in Vanda – there are strong parallels between the
soldiers’ chorus from Act IV of Faust and the victory march in Act IV of Vanda.70
Nevertheless, a certain amount of effective colouring is borrowed from Lohengrin
in the pulsating chords that accompany Vanda’s dignified farewell before she
throws herself into the river Vistula. In Dimitrij, to a libretto by Marie Červinková-
Riegrová, and far superior to that of Vanda, the musical influences are better
integrated, but the opera did develop a Wagnerian dimension in a comprehensive
revision, dealt with below, made in 1894.
The prevalent scholarly view of Dvořák’s style in the first half of the 1880s
is that it aligns strongly with Brahms. This is certainly true in works such as the
violin concerto – Dvořák was also closely advised in this work by Josef Joachim
– and the Sixth Symphony. But as ever with Dvořák, the story of stylistic affinities
is a complex one. His reaction to and assessment of audiences was becoming
an increasingly powerful determinant in how he developed and conditioned his
style. When it came to the audiences for the choral festivals in Birmingham and
Leeds, Dvořák larded his style with archaisms that would have struck a chord with

68
C.L. Richter (Schulzová’s pseudonym), Zdenko Fibich: Eine musikalische
Silhouette [Zdenko Fibich: a musical silhouette] (Prague, 1900), p. 70.
69
Smaczny, The Daily Repertoire of the Provisional Theatre, p. 133.
70
See Jan Smaczny, ‘A study of the first six operas of Antonín Dvořák: the foundations
of an operatic style’ (unpublished DPhil dissertation, University of Oxford, 1989), pp. 345–
7.
110 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

listeners attuned to the oratorios of Handel, Haydn and Mendelssohn. Thus, for
example, we find fugal passages appearing in all of the choral works for England
including no. 15 of Svatební košile [The spectre’s bride], nos. 9, 17 and 45 of
Svatá Ludmila [St Ludmila] and the ‘Rex tremendae majestatis’ of the Requiem
Mass. However, these oratorios are decidedly eclectic works and, alongside the
Baroque references, Wagner can again make an appearance, as in the climactic
aria ‘Maria panno, při mnĕ stůj’ (‘Virgin Mary, stand by me’) of Svatební košile,
in which an unfortunate maiden begs heavenly aid to escape the attentions of
an importunate ghoul who has trapped her in a morgue, with its clear tribute to
Tannhäuser (Example 5.5).

Example 5.5 Dvořák, Svatební košile (B 135), ‘Maria panno, při mnĕ stůj’,
opening71

It is also interesting that in Example 5.5 Dvořák appears to be associating the

Wagner manner with a redemptive-religious trope, as in the Stabat Mater. Even
in a work as apparently orthodox as the Seventh Symphony, written for the
Philharmonic Society of London and certainly influenced by Brahms, Wagnerian
influence is also apparent. Tovey, while unhesitatingly placing the work on a par
with Brahms four symphonies and Schubert’s ‘Great C major’, observed that in

71
Jiří Berkovec (ed.), Antonín Dvořák, Svatební košile, Dvorak complete edition
vocal score, piano arr. by Karel Šolc (Prague, 1980), p. 202.
 ‘The great little man’ 111

the slow movement ‘horn and clarinet play the parts of a rustic Tristan and Isolde
to a crowd of sympathetic orchestral witnesses’.72 While this makes attractive
reading, more convincingly Wagnerian moments are to be found toward the ends
of the first movement (bb. 299–301) and in the scherzo (bb. 224–33). Although
the latter appears in the context of one of Dvořák’s most successful orchestral
Furiants, the usage is convincingly integrated.
The end of the 1880s witnessed a decisive shift in Dvořák’s compositional
orientation. Contact with highly enthusiastic audiences in England and disillusion
with critical response in Germany and Austria seem to have prompted a broadening
of horizons. Key in this change is the Eighth Symphony. Its free-wheeling formal
experiment and novel approach to motivic integration created evident problems
for Brahms who found:

Too much that’s fragmentary, incidental, loiters about in the piece. Everything
fine, musically captivating and beautiful – but no main points! Especially in the
first movement, the result is not proper.73

There was, of course, no rebound back to earlier affinities with Wagner,

notwithstanding clear references in the slightly later programmatic overtures
Karneval (Carnival, Op. 92, B 169) and Othello (Op. 93, B 174) respectively to
Tannhäuser and Die Walküre. However, it is interesting to note that Dvorak leaned
heavily on Wagner in both design and detail in the Requiem Mass (Op. 89, B
165) composed for the Birmingham Festival of 1891. The score is dominated by
a leitmotif, memorably described by Dvořák’s main biographer, Otakar Šourek,
as a ‘remembrance of death’,74 which is used with great symphonic flexibility
throughout this, the longest of Dvořák’s choral works. Even more tellingly, there
seems to be a direct reference to Tristan und Isolde in the introduction to the
‘Tuba Mirum’. As in the Stabat Mater, and Svatební košile, Dvořák seems to be
equating the Wagner manner with the religious sublime (Example 5.6).75

Dvořák: The Later Years

A more serious engagement with Wagner seems to have been prompted

by Dvořák’s encounter with Anton Seidl in New York. Seidl, a committed

72
The passage in question runs from b. 32 to b. 38 of the Poco adagio; see Donald
Francis Tovey, Essays in Musical Analysis: Symphonies and Other Orchestral Works
(Oxford, 1989), p. 276.
73
Quoted in David Beveridge, ‘Dvořák and Brahms: A Chronicle, an Interpretation’,
in Michael Beckerman (ed.), Dvořák and his World (Princeton, 1993), p. 82.
74
Šourek, Život a dílo Antonína Dvořáka, vol. 2, p. 339.
75
František Bartoš, Jarmil Burghauser and Antonín Čubr (eds), Antonin Dvorak,
Requiem, Dvorak complete edition vocal score, piano arr. by Karel Šolc (Prague, 1960), p. 38.
112 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

Example 5.6 Dvořák, Requiem Mass (Op. 89, B 165), start of ‘Tuba Mirum’

Wagnerian who had worked with Richter on the first performance of Der Ring
and had lived with the Wagner family for six years, was principal conductor of
the New York Metropolitan Opera from 1885 to 1891 and thereafter conductor
of the New York Philharmonic until 1898; he also conducted the premiere of the
New World symphony in 1893. According to Dvořák’s amanuensis in the United
States, Joseph Kovařík, the composer met frequently with Seidl and discussed
avidly Wagner’s music and working methods.76 Kovařík also recorded that
during his exchanges with Seidl Dvořák was insistent that Tannhäuser was the
greatest of Wagner’s operas.77 The first significant result of their contact was a
comprehensive revision of the grand opera Dimitrij made between April and the
end of July 1894 (B 186), in which over 60 per cent of the score was changed.
Many of its grand-operatic characteristics were removed or adapted and a great
deal of the word setting was changed. Symptomatic of these changes was the
revision of the prelude to the fourth act where an engagingly open ostinato,
over which the melodic material is floated, is replaced by a brooding, darkly
Wagnerian introduction (Examples 5.7a and b).78

76
See Josef Jan Kovařík, ‘S Dvořákem v Americe’ [With Dvořák in America], Pestrá
příloha Venkova, 28/4 (5 May 1929). Parts of this article are reprinted in Otakar Šourek
(ed.), Dvořák ve vzpomínkách a dopisech [Dvořák in reminiscences and letters] (Prague,
1938), pp. 126–8. See also English translation by Roberta Finlayson-Samsour, Antonín
Dvořák: Letters and Reminiscences (Prague, 1954), pp. 167–70.
77
Šourek, Dvořák ve vzpomínkách a dopisech, p. 126; Finlayson-Samsour, Letters
and Reminiscences, p. 168.
78
Antonín Dvořák, Dimitrij, first version, vocal score, piano arr. by Josef Zubatý,
Jindřich Kàan (Prague, 1886), p. 249.
 ‘The great little man’ 113

Example 5.7a Dvořák Dimitrij, first version, 1881–82 (B 127), Act IV prelude,
opening

Example 5.7b Dvořák Dimitrij, second version, 1894 (B 186), Act IV prelude,
opening79

Against the background of the popularity and general critical acclaim of the first
version of Dimitrij (itself revised in many places), it is perhaps unsurprising
that this radical revision met with little enthusiasm. Initially, Dvořák was
sensitive concerning criticisms of Wagnerism and accusations that revisions do
not improve works, citing the examples of Beethoven’s Fidelio and Smetana’s
Prodaná nevěsta in his defence,80 but it seems that he later changed his mind.

79
Transcription from autograph MS, p. 1.
80
See letter to Aloïs Göbl in Kuna (ed.), Antonín Dvořák: korespondence a dokumenty,
vol. 3, pp. 328–31.
114 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

For a performance in Plzen in 1904, he supplied the performers of the opera

house with the first version.81
If Wagnerian influence sat rather ill in the context of the revision of a work
that, as far as the public and most critics were concerned, was a palpable success,
the adoption of the manner in Dvořák’s next two operas was almost entirely
beneficial both in terms of design and harmonic colouring. By the time Dvořák
set to work on his two fairly-tale operas, Čert a Káča [The Devil and Kate, Op.
112, B 201] and Rusalka (Op. 114, B 203), in 1899 and 1900, in selecting such
folk-orientated subject matter, he was rather bucking the trend prevalent in the
National Theatre which clearly favoured Verismo.82 While Dvořák certainly found
the plots and atmosphere in both operas congenial, he was guided to both libretti
by the influential director of the National Theatre, František Šubert.83 Musically,
each work has strongly Wagnerian features, including extensive use of leitmotif.
Wagnerian harmonic colouring is also strong, most particularly in Rusalka, but
also in the second act of Čert a Káča to the extent that it almost seems as if Dvořák
had been leafing through parts of Der Ring by way of preparation (see for example
Čert a Káča, Act II, bb. 91–100).84
In Rusalka, Wagnerian methods and colouring are, if anything, more effectively
integrated and certainly suit the more serious mythic background to Kvapil’s plot,
influenced as it is by Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, De la Motte Fouqué’s Undine
and Gerhard Hauptmann’s The Sunken Bell. Motifs are used in a Wagnerian manner
and one at least, the Water Goblin’s ‘curse’ motif heard first in the prelude, bb.
48–53, has clear Wagnerian harmonic colouring. For the most part, however, the
melodic accent is authentically Dvořákian, notably Rusalka’s beguiling and sinuous
melody which originated in a sketch for the first movement of a cello sonata made
in America in 1893.85 Also, Rusalka is by no means a thorough-going Music Drama:
many of its glories are all too excerptable, in particular its star number, Rusalka’s
‘Mĕsíčku na nebi hlubokém’ [Song to the moon], and as a whole the opera is only
enhanced by the act-two ballet and the little divertissement for the wood nymphs in

81
See Milan Pospíšil, ‘Dimitrij – A Challenge to Editors’, in Beveridge, Rethinking
Dvořák, p. 101.
82
See Jan Smaczny, ‘Czech Composers and Verismo’, in Glen Bauer and Michael
Beckerman (eds), Janáček and Czech Music: Proceedings of The International Conference,
St Louis, 1988 (Stuyvesant, NY, 1995), pp. 33–43.
83
See Jan Smaczny, ‘Dvořák, his Librettists, and the Working Libretto for Armida’,
Music & Letters 91/4 (2010), p. 561.
84
Ralph Vaughan Williams took a rather dim view of Dvořák’s adoption of the Wagner
manner, as is evident from a letter of 1899 to Randolph Wedgwood from Prague: ‘We went
to the opera – all the part of it which dealt with Bohemian village life was tremendously
good. But when we got down to Hell … it got very dull – and much of the music was
bagged from the ‘Niebelheim’ in Wagner’s Rheingold.’ See Hugh Cobbe (ed.), Letters of
Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1895–1958 (Oxford, 2010), p. 36.
85
See Jan Smaczny, Dvořák: Cello Concerto in B minor (Cambridge, 1999), p. 13.
 ‘The great little man’ 115

the third. Thus, no conclusive categorical statement about Dvořák’s Wagnerism can
be made with any security. Anglophone commentary on Dvořák, particularly in the
mid century, exposes the impossibility of trying to pin down the nature of Wagner’s
influence. Alec Robertson’s Master Musicians study of the composer is symptomatic.
A recurrent trope seems to be that Dvořák was, somehow, misled by Wagner.
Speaking of Dvořák’s music from the 1870s, Robertson states: ‘What happened
has already been told; and doubtless it would have happened even if Wagner had
not obscured his vision.’86 Of the work of Dvořák’s last decade Robertson speaks
of Dvořák turning ‘away from the classical highways’ and entering on ‘romantic
bypaths … blazed by Liszt and Wagner’, adding, on a rather more sinister note: ‘We
shall have to consider this deviation later on’.87 And yet, shortly before proclaiming
that in Rusalka ‘the texture of the music is even more defiantly Wagnerian than in
The Devil and Kate’, Robertson puts his finger on a fundamental truth: ‘In this opera
Dvořák mingles old and new styles’.88 For most composers in a Wagnerian and post-
Wagnerian world, it was ever thus. The observation is as true for Richard Strauss
and Humperdinck as for Dvořák in his operatic masterpiece, which has proved its
popularity with audiences for over 100 years.
Josef Michl recalled a conversation with Dvořák, presumably from the late
1890s, in which the composer revealed an enthusiastic interest in the anti-Wagner
writings of Friedrich Nietzsche.89 While Dvořák conceded that Nietzsche’s attack
had merit, his final sally was an impassioned encomium to Wagner:

You know, about Wagner there is much to write and say – and you can criticize
much – but he is undefeatable! What Wagner did none had done before him and
nor can anyone take it away! Music will go on its way, leaving Wagner behind,
but Wagner will remain exactly like the statue of that poet from whom they still
learn at school today. Homer! And such a Homer will be Wagner.90

This account has an epigrammatic quality that belies the cut and thrust of genuine
conversation, but Dvořák’s reaction seems genuinely to be that of a musician
defending an irreproachable legacy. In so far as we have any indication of Dvořák’s
engagement with Wagner in ideological terms, this is it.

86
Alec Robertson, Dvořák (London, 1945), p. 83.
87
Ibid., p. 75.
88
Ibid., p. 138.
89
Chiefly ‘Der Fall Wagner’ of 1888 and ‘Neitzsche contra Wagner’ of 1889; See
Michl below.
90
‘Víte, o Wagnerovi se dá mnoho mluvit a psát – může se mu i mnoho vyčítat – ale
nice ho neporazí! To, co udĕlal Wagner, neudĕlal před ním nikdo a nevyvrátí to taky nikdo!
Hudba půjde svou cestou dál, nechá Wagnera stranou, ale Wagner bude stát, zrovna jako
socha toho básníka, z kterého se ještĕ dneska na školách učí. Homér! A takový Homér bude
i Wagner!’ Josef Michl, ‘Z Dvořákova vyprávĕní’ [Tales from Dvořák], Hudební revue 7
(1913–14), p. 402.
116 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

Dvořák’s last opera, Armida, paradoxically, both problematizes and simplifies

the question of influence. On the one hand, while not quoting Wagner, there are
aspects of the motivic material that lean heavily on the musical language of both
Tannhäuser and Parsifal. The use of leitmotif is relatively systematic, but the
frame is fundamentally un-Wagnerian. Jaroslav Vrchlický’s libretto, originally
written for Karel Kovařovic in 1888, is cast in four acts and contains many features,
including a choral ballet, marches, processions, a divertissement and a large
double-chorus conclusion to the second act, all of which are entirely consonant
with the conventions of French Grand Opera. At the turn of the century, Dvořák
seems to have rediscovered his love of Grand Opera and, personally, encountered
little difficulty in integrating his near lifelong admiration of Wagner into a genre
which for many was very much of another era. Nevertheless, if Otakar Dvořák’s
reminiscences of his father are to be believed,91 the composer attempted to persuade
Vrchlický to reduce the four-act original to three, an interesting throwback to his
own intervention in the libretto of Körner’s Alfred der Grosse. His suggestion was
rejected, although Vrchlický countenanced numerous, very practical, changes to
the structure of the libretto, particularly in the first act, made by the composer.92
Armida was a near failure at its premiere – the first Dvořák had experienced
for nearly 30 years – and has also failed to establish itself in the repertoire, even
in the National Theatre in Prague, notwithstanding four new productions over a
century. And yet Wagner was not the problem. In a sense the whole project had
been shaky from the start and gave Dvořák, normally a very fluent worker, many
problems along the way.93 The opera was out of time and out of tune with the
requirements of its audience. Unfortunately, Dvořák died five weeks after the
premiere of Armida and had no opportunity, as surely he would have taken given
his track record with Král a uhlíř, Dimitrij and Jakobín [The Jacobin], to revise the
work. As has been noted above, in the Stabat Mater and the Requiem Mass Dvořák
was adept at importing Wagnerian chromaticism into the fabric of the work for
moments associated with the religious sublime. In opera, however, Dvořák proved
himself, unlike Fibich (notably in the love-duet sequence in the second act of
Šárka (1897)), incapable of engaging with the erotic impulse in Wagner. The love
duets in Armida, toward the end of the second and fourth acts, are unquestionably
beautiful, but they are far from erotic. While he could handle the Wagner manner
with virtuosity, the coordination of the style with the erotic in opera was something
of a closed book to him.
Dvořák cast his compositional net very wide and Wagner was certainly part
of the haul. But so were Brahms, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Schumann, Smetana and

91
See Otakar Dvořák, ‘Nĕkolik vzpomínek na vznik a premiéru Dvořákovy Armidy’
[Various reminiscences on the origin and premiere of Dvořák’s Armida], Venkov, 30
December 1928.
92
For a fuller examination of Dvořák’s alterations to the libretto of Armida see
Smaczny, ‘Dvořák, his Librettists, pp. 555–67.
93
See ibid., pp. 564–5.
 ‘The great little man’ 117

Mendelssohn. Wagner is a big fish in this rich haul, but atomizing his influence as
such commentators as Robertson do is to misunderstand the nature of Dvořák’s
style, built as it is, astonishingly effectively, from a wealth of sources by example
and appropriation. If the various strands in a composer’s style were in constant
opposition, there would be no style and this is palpably not the situation with
Dvořák. Whether a work is more or less Wagnerian (inevitably Rusalka is the
paradigm), or more or less Brahmsian, or even Verdian, are not issues likely to
exercise audiences, notwithstanding all the fun music scholars may have as they
ride out for a round of ‘influence spotting’.
This page has been left blank intentionally
 Chapter 6
Wagnerism in Moravia: Janáček’s First
Opera, Šárka
Michael Ewans

Introduction1

The early training that Leoš Janáček (1854–1928) received in his home city of Brno
had been almost entirely confined to choral and instrumental music. While he was
a student, there was no Czech-language theatre, and as a fanatical nationalist, he
refused to set foot in Brno’s German-language theatre. When he went to study in
Leipzig (1879–80), he chose to go to concerts rather than to operas. But in 1883
his interest widened to opera; he was then living and studying in Prague, and he
devoured as many operas as he could.2 The next year, the first Czech-language theatre
(The ‘Provisional Theatre’) was opened in Brno; and only a week after the initial
performances in December 1884 Janáček announced the first issue of the periodical
Hudební listy [Musical Pages], founded specifically to comment on the new operatic
repertory in Brno. He edited it for the next four years, and apart from musicological
articles, he wrote reviews of all the opera and operetta performances at the theatre.3
These opened his eyes fully to the medium, and very soon he was studying scores
by a wide variety of composers, including Smetana and Wagner. After a study and
critique of Tristan und Isolde in 1885 he declared Wagner to be among the most
important of all opera composers.4
Janáček’s new enthusiasm for opera led him to consider composing one. But
this project did not advance beyond preliminary thoughts until early in 1887, when
the celebrated Czech poet Julius Zeyer (1841–1901) published his Šárka in three
instalments in the fortnightly theatre review Česká Thalia [Czech Thalia].5 In this
publication the author described the verse play as a ‘music drama’; this refers to
the fact that Zeyer had designed it as a libretto, and had hoped, when he wrote it in
the early 1880s, that Dvořák would set it; but he did not do so. The subtitle ‘music
drama’ is also quite clearly a nod towards Wagnerism; certainly the text of Šárka is

1
I am very grateful to John Tyrrell, doyen of British Janáček scholars, for reading
a draft of this chapter and saving me from several errors. Those that remain are my own.
2
John Tyrrell, Janáček: Years of a Life, vol. 1 (London, 2006), pp. 237–8.
3
Details ibid., p. 298ff.
4
Hudební listy 2.8, 30. See below, ‘Harmony’.
5
See Česká Thalia, 1 January, 15 January, 1 February 1887.
120 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

Wagnerian not only in subject matter but also in form, as explored further below.
Like Wagner’s mature music dramas, it contains no self-contained numbers. This
is probably one reason why Dvořák rejected it – at this period he was composing
operas with set pieces, not through-composed music dramas.6 Janáček, however, took
up the text with great enthusiasm. He had completed a piano score by midsummer
1887, and showed it to his mentor Dvořák, who approved of the composition.7 But
Zeyer refused permission for Janáček’s setting of Šárka; perhaps he still hoped that
Dvořák himself might set it, and he was definitely irritated by the fact that Janáček
had composed a score to his text without his permission.8 Janáček nonetheless spent
some of the next year almost completely recasting the score, composing a new
overture and orchestrating the first two acts.9 But then, knowing that he could not
achieve a performance because of Zeyer’s refusal, he put the work away.
Janáček did not rediscover the opera in his manuscript chest until 1918, when he
had become famous in Brno, Prague and Vienna as the composer of Jenůfa.10 He then
revised the voice parts of Šárka, engaged his pupil Osvald Chlubna to orchestrate
the third act, and had no trouble in obtaining permission to perform it from the
Czech Academy, to which Zeyer, who had died in 1901, had willed the rights. Šárka
was first performed on 11 November 1925, at the National Theatre in Brno. It was
given sporadic performances subsequently, to mark anniversaries of the composer’s
death, in various Czech cities in 1938, 1958 and 1978. Serious international attention
was not focused on the opera until a concert performance at the Edinburgh Festival
in 1993; and the work was finally co-published by Universal Edition and Editio
Moravia in 2000, in a meticulous edition prepared by the young Brno musicologist
Jiří Zahrádka under the supervision of Sir Charles Mackerras.11 A ‘world premiere’
recording rapidly followed, conducted by Mackerras for the Supraphon label.12

Text

The legend of warrior maidens in the Czech lands dates back to an early fourteenth-
century verse chronicle written by Dalimil, in which the story of Ctirad and Šárka

6
John Tyrrell, Janáček’s Operas: A Documentary Account (London, 1992), p. 2.
7
Ibid., p. 5.
8
See letters ibid., pp. 4–5.
9
On the 1880 revision see Tyrrell, Janáček, pp. 312–13.
10
Tyrrell, Janáček’s Operas, p. 8.
11
More details about the genesis, revision and performance history of Šárka may be
found in Jiří Zahrádka (ed.) Janáček: Šárka (Vienna and Brno, 2000), pp. xxiv–xxvii and
Alena Němcová, notes accompanying the CD of Šárka, SU 3485-2 631 (Prague, 2001), pp.
9–13. Relevant documents can also be found in Tyrrell, Janáček’s Operas, pp. 1–20.
12
Technically this was not the world premiere recording; in 1992 Multisonics issued a
CD of a 1953 radio broadcast in which the Brno Radio Symphony Orchestra was conducted
by Bretislav Bakala.
 Wagnerism in Moravia 121

appears for the first time.13 Zeyer, however, used a rather more recent source. As the
nationalist movement emerged in the late eighteenth century, Czech nationalists
became aware that, unlike ancient Greece and mediaeval Germany, their country
and their language lacked narratives of the heroic past. To fill this gap in their
national culture anonymous forgers created the Dvůr Králové and Zelená Hora
manuscripts, which were ‘discovered’ in 1817;14 they inspired Zeyer to publish
in 1880 an epic poem, Vyšehrad, devoted (like the Iliad and the Nibelungenlied
in their respective cultures) to the heroic deeds of the early Czechs. Zeyer then
went on to write his ‘musical drama’, Šárka; it dramatizes the events of the fourth
part of his epic, which is entitled Ctirad. A synopsis of the plot as Janáček set it
follows:

I Façade of a castle, on the other side a rock, with a door in it leading to

Libuše’s tomb
Přemysl and his knights lament the death of his wife, Queen Libuše, and the
coming of Vlasta’s murderous army of female warriors. A young knight, Ctirad,
enters on horseback; his father has told him that to overcome Vlasta’s savagery
he must come to this deserted castle, and retrieve the hammer and shield of the
slain warrior Trut. Přemysl and his warriors depart to their citadel of Vyšehrad.
Ctirad soliloquizes in the peaceful night, but then he hears the cries of the warrior
maidens in the distance, and he goes into Libuše’s tomb. There he sees the dead
Queen on a golden throne, with a golden crown on her head. Meanwhile Vlasta’s
warrior maidens arrive at the castle, led by Šárka. She sees that the way into
the vault is open, and goes inside. She is seeking Libuše’s crown, which omens
have told her will give the women victory. As Šárka is about to take the crown,
Ctirad steps out from the darkness with the hammer and shield, which have
magical powers, and stops her. Šárka and her troops leave in dismay; Ctirad is
torn between bliss and death by the sight of her.
II A wild deserted valley
Šárka, too, began to tremble when she saw Ctirad. But she regains her strength
and determines that he must die. She gets her warrior maidens to tie her to a tree;
when Ctirad arrives on horseback she calls out for help. He releases her, and
she pretends that Vlasta accused her of cowardice and had her bound there. She
throws herself on Ctirad’s mercy, but he refuses to kill her, and embraces her.

13
Jiří Daňhelka, Karel Hádek, Bohuslav Havránek and Naděžda Kvítková (eds),
Staročeská kronika tak řečeného Dalimila [The ancient Czech chronicle as told by Damilil]
(2 vols, Prague, 1988).
14
On these manuscripts cf. M. Ivanov et al., ‘Protokoly o zhoumáni Rukopisu
Královédvorského a Zelenohorského a nekterých dalsich rukopisu Národniho Muzea v
Praze (1967–1971)’ [Protocols on the investigation of the Manuscript of Dvůr Králové
and the Manuscript of Zelená Hora and some other manuscripts of the National Museum
in Prague, 1967–71], Sbornik Národniho muzea v Praze. Rada C: Literárni historie 36/1–4
(1993), pp. 1–116.
122 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

After a few brief moments of mutual bliss, Šárka sounds her horn; the warrior
maidens appear and kill Ctirad. Šárka calls the dead body ‘my Ctirad’, and
grieves for what she has done.
III A courtyard at Vyšehrad
Přemysl is filled with foreboding when there is a pounding on the gates of his
castle. His courtier Lumír leads in a band of men; four of them carry a bier.
Přemysl recognizes Ctirad. The warriors demand revenge on Šárka, but the gates
open as if by magic and she appears, bearing Trut’s hammer and shield. She only
wants to die with her beloved Ctirad; when Lumír prepares to light his funeral
pyre, she throws herself onto it and stabs herself at Ctirad’s side. As the flames,
‘the curtain around their nuptial bed’,15 engulf them, the opera ends with a large
ensemble in praise of the wonder of love.

Zeyer’s text (which Janáček adapted for his setting mainly by cutting some
verbose passages) is saturated with Wagnerism. The first Wagnerian element in the
scenario is the legendary setting – totally unlike the realistic and expressionistic
dramatic milieux of Janáček’s mature tragic operas, but very much in keeping
with other nationalistic mythological operas of the period, in particular Smetana’s
Libuše, to which the story of Šárka is a sequel. Setting this text was Janáček’s first,
and last, venture into the heady world of late Romanticism. Second, the element
of magic also evokes Wagnerian images; Trut’s hammer and shield, and the golden
crown of Libuše, all have magical powers, like the Ring and Tarnhelm in Das
Rheingold. Next, of course, is the chorus of savage warrior maidens, behind whom
the shadow of Wagner’s Valkyries looms large. And most important of all is the
fundamental theme of the opera, the love–hate relationship between Ctirad and
Šárka that is kindled as soon as they see each other. Brünnhilde’s struggle with
her feelings, when Siegfried has awakened her in the last scene of Siegfried, and
the mutual death pact of Tristan and Isolde at the end of the first act of Wagner’s
drama, are the obvious precursors to the internal conflict of Ctirad at the end of Act
I, and of Šárka at the start of Act II.
So it is not entirely surprising that the finale of Götterdämmerung influences
virtually the whole of Zeyer’s Act III. Přemysl’s men bring back the murdered body
of Ctirad to Vyšehrad, just as Siegfried is borne back to the hall of the Gibichungs
by Hagen and his men from the countryside where he died; and Šárka’s magical
entrance has strong resonances of Brünnhilde’s dramatic entrance; both women
impose their complete authority on the scene. They both then lament their hero’s
death, and throw themselves on the funeral pyre of the only man that each of them
has ever loved. Indeed, Šárka’s Brünnhilde-like self-immolation is a new element
in her story, contributed by Zeyer.

15
‘Obou svatebniho lože clonou’, Act III, fig. 23, bb. 4–6 (all references to the music
of Šárka are by the Act, rehearsal figure and bar numbers of the published vocal score, UE
31 656/EM 78 200).
 Wagnerism in Moravia 123

The unavoidable conclusion is that when Zeyer reworked the Ctirad part of his
epic poem into the ‘music drama’ Šárka, the models of Der Ring, and to a lesser
extent Tristan und Isolde, were very much in the front of his mind; this influence
stretches from the heroic setting and ambience, via the fundamental love–hate
relationship between Šárka and Ctirad, right through to the whole conception of
the events of Act III.
Janáček was instantly attracted to this text, when it was drawn to his attention.
He had in 1885 briefly considered an operatic subject in which the conflicts
between love and family loyalty might have been dramatized, in an exotic Moorish
Spanish setting,16 but he soon discarded this idea. I am certain that by contrast
Šárka attracted him to start composing at once because its place as part of the
national epic appealed to him as a fervent Czech nationalist. But unfortunately
Zeyer’s ‘music drama’ was a far from ideal libretto; some parts of it played to
Janáček’s weakness for high-flown poetic imagery, which is at odds with his
normally trenchant style (see below); and in Act III there is virtually no action. The
corpse of Ctirad is brought in; Šárka enters to lament the deed and then immolates
herself.
There is a big difference between the finales of Šárka and Götterdämmerung.
Wagner and Janáček used entirely different musical forms. Wagner scripted and
composed his final scene as an extended monologue followed by a purely orchestral
finale, while Zeyer provided Janáček with the kind of finale with which, as an
experienced composer of choral music, he was probably more comfortable at this
stage of his career. Thus, Přemysl and his men lament in response to Šárka’s grief
for Ctirad, and when she has killed herself and the flames engulf the dead lovers,
where Wagner employed a purely orchestral epilogue Janáček instead composed a
large ensemble on the text – ‘And you, o wind, blow throughout the land / and tell
the world of the wonder of love!’17 – followed by a short but powerful orchestral
coda of seven bars.18
Zeyer’s verbal style is less Wagnerian than his subject matter. It is a much
more ‘poetic’ libretto, in the Romantic sense of that word, than those of Wagner’s
mature music dramas starting with Das Rheingold. There are some affinities, such
as, for example when Ctirad, left alone, sings to the dark forest surrounding him:

16
The source for this scenario was Chateaubriand’s story The Last Abencerage.
17
‘A ty, ó větre, zaduj v širý kraj / a hlásej světu velký lasky div!’ (Act III, fig. 24,
b. 2ff).
18
Janáček later became a master of the dramatic monologue; all the mature tragic
operas have at least one. There are the Kostelnička’s confession in Jenůfa; Živný’s
narrative and vision in the last act of Osud; Kát’a’s scena alone by the banks of the Volga;
the Forester’s vision at the close of Příhody lišky Bystroušky [Adventures of the Vixen
Bystrouška]; Emilia Marty/Elina Makropulos’ acceptance of death; and the three great
narratives by convicted murderers in Z mrtvého domu [From the House of the Dead]. But
in his compressed style there was never a place for orchestral expansiveness on the scale of
the end of Götterdämmerung.
124 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

How often the whispering of the forest

penetrated the darkened room
As in the white courtyard my father told us
of heroes’ battles,
Spoke of the love of enchanting women.
[Jak často lesů šepotani
v sere síne vnikalo,
když otec na bilém dvorci o bojích bohatýrú,
o lásce lůznych žen vyprávěl.]19

This is something that Siegmund might have sung, when left alone after meeting
Sieglinde for the first time. But Wagner would never have written this continuation:

O dream of love so sweet,

O enchanted illusion,
So often do you fly around my temples,
A white butterfly vanishing in the blue spring sky!
[Ó, sne o sladké lásce,
ó, přelude kouzelný,
jak často kokem skráni oblětáš!
Jak z jara bilý motyl, jenž zmizí v modrý jas!]20

This poetic conceit, like Šárka’s extravagant claim to have torn ‘hosts of red stars …
from the skies / and looked upon their glowing remains’, and her prayer for clever
lies to fly to her lips ‘like a forest bird landing on the blossom-twig of the hawthorn
tree’,21 is very far from the kind of text that Wagner wrote, even for his more mystical
dramas Tristan and Isolde and Parsifal. But it played to Janáček’s already mentioned
weakness for this style, which was shown again in the early years of the twentieth
century; just after he had composed Jenůfa, based on a play with intensely realistic
dialogue, his next opera was Osud [Destiny]. The text for this was based on his own
prose scenario but versified by the young schoolteacher Fedora Bartošova, who was
in places just as prone as Zeyer to extravagantly ‘poetic’ imagery.
However, there are some moments where Zeyer’s text has a truly Wagnerian
intensity. I would single out the end of Act II, which – as set by Janáček – can bear
comparison with the end of Die Walküre Act II (from which it may be derived). In
both scenes there is murder, and a passionate outburst of emotion; in both scenes
principal characters have to witness the killing of a loved one, a killing which they
themselves have initiated (Wotan allows Hunding to kill Siegmund; Šárka allows

19
Act I, fig. 10, b. 16ff. Cf. also the moon as a ‘white blossom full of mystery’ (‘bílý
květe plný tajemstvi’ – Act II, fig. 6, bb. 4–5).
20
Ibid.
21
‘Strhla jsem s nebe tlupu rudých hvězd/ a prozkoumala žhavý jejich rum’ (Act I, fig.
23, b. 4ff); ‘jako lesní pták na kvetouci hlohu ratolest’ (Act II, fig. 13, bb. 10–12).
 Wagnerism in Moravia 125

the warrior maidens to kill Ctirad); and Šárka’s lament is as bitter and powerful
as Wotan’s:

Furies!
Away from me, cruel monsters!
My Ctirad!
(She falls onto his dead body.)
I am wretched, miserable!
(Curtain)
[Litice! Pryč, příšery ukrutné!
Můj Ctirade!
Já bídna, nešt’astná!]22

When Lumír leads in the bearers of Ctirad’s body in Act III, there is a direct echo
of the parallel scene in Götterdämmerung III.3:

The hounds have exhausted the proud stag,

As the hunter his game.
[Psi hrdého uštvali jelena,
jak lovec zvěř.]23

So too Hagen, as Siegfried’s funeral procession is about to reach the hall of the
Gibichungs:

The spoils of the hunt

We’re bringing home.
[Jagdbeute
bringen wir heim.]24

And, like Brünnhilde, Šárka uses the imagery of the sun as she stands over the
corpse of her lover:

My conqueror, open your sun-filled eyes

And let their brightness
Flame up to my salvation!
[Můj vítězi, otevři slunne oči své
a sářijejich jasnou
at’ vzplá mi spása!]25

22
Act II, fig. 34, b. 5ff.
23
Act III, fig. 3, b. 10ff.
24
Götterdämmerung Act III, scene 3, p. 1198. Wagner references are to the Act, scene
and page numbers of the Eulenberg study score.
25
Act III, fig. 15, b. 7ff.
126 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

Compared with Brünnhilde’s lines:

Like pure sunlight

His radiance beams on me.
[Wie Sonne lauter
strahlt mir sein Licht.]26

Music

As in Der Ring, each act of Šárka is through-composed, with no formal musical

numbers marked as such. Though it does contain choruses and arias, these are
integrated into the fabric. There are some short sections marked as ‘recitative’,
but they are nothing like classical recitative; they are fully accompanied, and the
orchestral response is almost as dramatic as it is to sections not so designated.
Indeed, without following a score or a libretto which marks the recitatives,
it is hard to tell them apart from the other parts of the seamless orchestral
commentary, and this is one of the striking elements about the opera that recalls
Wagner’s music dramas. The least Wagnerian feature of Janáček’s first opera is
its length; the three acts together total 64 minutes of music, around the length
of each single act in the three ‘stage festival plays’ of Der Ring.27 Already, even
within the context of an opera imbued with Wagnerian influences, Janáček was
showing the tendency towards compression that led to the pace of his last four
operas, in each of which the three acts total to around two hours of music.

Tone Painting

In Act I, after Přemysl and his men have left him alone at the deserted castle,
Ctirad sings a monologue – ‘O holy silence, / Sweetest darkness ...’28 – in which,
inspired by the landscape, he dreams of love (Act I, fig. 9, b. 1ff.). Tremolandi upper
strings and undulating groups of semiquavers in the lower instruments accompany
his song, while a lyrical melody unfolds in the middle registers. At I.11.9 ‘the
moon comes up over the wood, a nightingale sings’29 – and it is duly heard in the
orchestra three bars later, impersonated by a trilling flute (see Example 6.1).30

26
Götterdämmerung Act III, scene 3, p. 1261.
27
Act I of Götterdämmerung is of course much longer – nearly as long as Strauss’
Elektra at around two hours.
28
‘Posvátné ticho, / přesladké šero …’.
29
‘Zár měsíce nad lesem, ozýva se zpěv slavíka.’
30
There is a similar combination of tremolandi – now in the lower instruments – and
a lyric string line when Šárka in her turn addresses the moon (II.6.1 ff.).
 Wagnerism in Moravia 127

Example 6.1 Janáček, Šárka, Act I, fig. 11, b. 9, the nightingale sings

Example 6.2 Janáček, Šárka, Act I, fig. 2, bb. 11–15

Janáček had not seen Siegfried in the theatre, and there is no evidence that
he had studied it.31 Nonetheless, this episode, in its use of the orchestra to link
human passions and natural phenomena, is highly reminiscent of the famous
scene of Siegfried under the linden tree and the forest murmurs (Siegfried II.2);
and Janáček’s own description in his autobiography of the opening musical
phrases of Act I – ‘the gloom of unhewn forests, reeking of moss’32 – shows

31
The only Wagner opera whose specific influence is overt in Janáček’s earlier works
is Lohengrin, extracts from which were played in Brno in the late 1870s (Jaroslav Vogel,
Leoš Janáček: A Biography (London, 1981), pp. 61–2). And, as noted above, Janáček had
studied Tristan und Isolde only two years before he composed Šárka.
32
Tyrrell, Janáček’s Operas, p. 11.
128 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

that at this time he, like Wagner, saw tone-painting as one of the important
powers of the Romantic orchestra. Another fine example of tone painting occurs
soon after the curtain rises, when Přemysl describes the approach of darkness
(Example 6.2).
Here again the delicacy of the orchestral texture used to evoke nature at rest
is thoroughly Wagnerian; compare this with the music of a similarly darkened
forest in Act II of Tristan und Isolde, which Janáček had studied.

Voice Parts

Most of the revisions that Janáček made to the score of Šárka, when he
rediscovered it in 1918, were to the vocal lines. From Jenůfa onwards, Janáček
composed abrupt vocal lines with short phrases, based on the natural cadences
of Czech speech. By contrast, many of the voice parts in Šárka are lyrical, quite
opposed to his practice in the later operas – but far more akin to the expansive
phrasing characteristic of Wagner, and of his Czech imitator Smetana. In the
published edition Jiří Zahrádka has of course normally printed Janáček’s final
version; but one example is found there, since Zahrádka cites the divergent
versions found in the final MS of the vocal and full scores (Example 6.3).

Example 6.3 Janáček, Šárka, Act II, fig. 18, bb. 2–3

The four semiquavers of the MS piano score (6.3, vocal line labelled ‘a’) are
much more in the style of the late Janáček operas than the original lyric line,
occupying the whole bar, in the MS of the full score (labelled ‘b’ in 6.3).33

33
Further examples of the changes which Janáček made to the vocal lines are cited in
John Tyrrell, Czech Opera (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 294–7. For the manuscripts of Šárka and
their locations see Zahrádka, pp. xxviii–xxx.
 Wagnerism in Moravia 129

Ensembles

Wagner proscribed ensembles in his theoretical works of 1849–50, which created

the new aesthetic that dominates Der Ring: that voice parts should not overlap. But
it is a notorious fact that he broke his own rule with the setting of the final duet in
Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung contains two duets and a trio, not to mention a
choral ensemble in Act II.34 In his mature tragic operas Janáček, unlike Wagner,
had a consistent position on ensembles; overlapping of voices is only permitted
at moments of extreme tension (such as when the villagers turn on Jenůfa in Act
III, or when Kát’a confesses to adultery at the height of the storm in III.1); but
after the quartet with chorus in Act I of Jenůfa, which Janáček himself admitted
in 1904 was an uncharacteristic relapse into traditional style,35 there are almost no
ensembles of soloists in the traditional sense of that word.36
Zeyer’s Šárka libretto is in general designed for a music drama in the late
Wagnerian style, since most of it consists of dialogue. But the choruses of knights,
warrior maidens and, in Act III, youths and girls as well give the opportunity
for choral music, which Janáček took up with relish. He even added an extra
chorus to Act I in 1919 (the ‘Hoj!’ chorus as the knights depart for Vyšehrad,
I.8), and coaxed one of his current librettists into writing the words for it.37 The
choruses frequently interject their own thoughts, as a group, in dialogue with
solo characters; and in Act III there are four ensembles. The call for vengeance
when the knights react to the death of Ctirad (III.6–8) and their response to
Šárka’s entrance (III.10–11) are relatively brief; but Šárka’s lament for Ctirad
generates a substantial choral ensemble with three soloists (Šárka, Přemysl and
Lumír) and first male then female chorus (III.14–18). This is followed at III.23
by the finale to the whole work, the Adagio, molto espressivo e lugubre ensemble
which accompanies the burning of the funeral pyre. Janáček reserved for these
crowning moments of the opera a full SATB chorus in harmony (together with
solo vocal lines for Přemysl and Lumír) for the first time.
The ensembles in Šárka (especially the last) have much in common with those
of Tannhäuser and Lohengrin, to which they owe a great deal. Here the influence
on Janáček is not that of Wagner’s culminating music dramas, but that of the two
Romantic Grand Operas which he composed in the 1840s, before rethinking the

34
See Michael Ewans, ‘Music and Stagecraft in Wagner’s Ring’, Miscellanea
Musicologica 14 (1985), pp. 83–98. Wagner obviously also felt that there were different
rules for comic operas; Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is full of ensembles. So too is
Janáček’s only comic opera, Výlety pana Broučka [The Excursions of Mr Brouček].
35
‘… something of a concession to an effective musical motif which I would hardly
allow myself today’; quoted in Tyrrell, Janáček’s Operas, p. 58 (from a letter to the Editor,
responding to a review of Jenůfa in a Prague newspaper).
36
An exception is made for the rather superficial spa-goers in the first act of Osud
(1907).
37
Tyrrell, Janáček’s Operas, p. 10.
130 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

whole nature of his art and its objectives in his exile after the 1848 uprisings.
Janáček had studied Lohengrin; and he will also have absorbed the example of
those Wagner operas at second hand, by seeing the operas of Dvořák and Smetana,
who in the period before the composition of Šárka were structuring their operas
very much on the formal model of middle-period Wagner, which exercised a
profound impact on Smetana in particular.38

Melodies

There are in Šárka many lush Romantic gestures of which Wagner would have
been proud, and there are two particular moments which directly recall Wagner.
The first comes at the end of Act I, when Ctirad, having fallen in love at first sight
with his enemy Šárka, feels desire and death struggling in his soul (Example 6.4a).
So too does Wotan struggle with the tension between love and the need to part
from his daughter for ever at the close of Die Walküre, and with a very similar
orchestral theme (Example 6.4b):

Example 6.4a Janáček, Šárka, Act I, fig. 31, bb. 9–11

Example 6.4b Wagner, Die Walküre, Act III, scene 3, p. 973

Or the cello solo (Example 6.5a), reminiscent of the music for the awakening
love of Siegmund and Sieglinde (Example 6.5b), which is heard in Act II, after
Ctirad has freed Šárka from her bonds, and she is beginning (like Sieglinde, but
against her will) to feel love for him.
However, such melodies coexist uneasily with the feature which, I have no
doubt, endeared his first opera to Janáček when he rediscovered it in 1918. Šárka
was the first opera by a composer who was soon to develop an entirely novel style
of operatic composition, and it is quite amazing to what extent the seeds of the
revolution in Jenůfa are already implicit in this score. Janáček’s mature opera scores
use as building blocks small, obsessive orchestral motifs which appear, are repeated
with or without variation of their intervals, pitch and instrumentation, and are then

38
See Chapter 5.
 Wagnerism in Moravia 131

Example 6.5a Janáček, Šárka, Act II, fig. 20, bb. 10–12, awakening love

Example 6.5b Wagner, Die Walküre, Act I, scene 1, pp. 25–6, awakening love

succeeded by new motifs when the dramatic situation portrayed in the text changes.39
This technique is already present in many passages of Šárka. Take for example this
extract from the first scene. Přemysl’s plea for the night to bring peace (see Example
6.2) is followed by a delicious Romantic coda in G flat major, where the strings soar
to the heights; but that is then followed by a quite different style. When horn calls

Example 6.6 Janáček, Šárka, Act I, fig. 2, bb 19–24, Romantic style turns to a
repeated ostinato

39
See Michael Ewans, Janáček’s Tragic Operas (London, 1977), p. 26.
132 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

break up the peace, an obsessive descending quintuplet is repeated again and again
across all registers for 43 bars as a stranger (Ctirad) approaches (Example 6.6).
Similarly the approach of the warrior maidens (Example 6.7) is signalled by an
obsessive ostinato motif, which continues right through to after their appearance,
as they sing that they storm through the land, wreaking destruction on all who
encounter them:

Example 6.7 Janáček, Šárka, Act I, fig. 12, bb. 9–11, approach of the warrior
maidens

And sometimes a speech-melody generates an echo in the orchestra, in a

manner frequently found in the mature Janáček operas (Example 6.8):

Example 6.8 Janáček, Šárka, Act II, fig. 2, bb. 10–12, speech-melody generates
orchestral ostinato

Leitmotifs

Šárka has none of the so-called leitmotifs, which Wagner himself referred to as
‘motifs of reminiscence’. Jaroslav Vogel claims, with unconvincing examples, that
some motifs in this opera ‘are later developed into a sort of monothematic pool of
Leitmotivs or, at least, of motto elements to be used throughout the work’.40 This
goes too far; for a recurrent motif to qualify as a leitmotif it must (a) be strongly
associated with a person, a process or a thing, and (b) be repeated clearly whenever

40
Vogel, Janáček: A Biography, p. 91.
 Wagnerism in Moravia 133

the thought of that person, process or thing is to be invoked in the audience. The
few recurrences of motifs in Šárka do not posses either of these characteristics;
and there certainly is no monothematic pool of motifs that I can detect in the score.
In particular, although there are magical objects in the scenario (Trut’s hammer
and shield, Libuše’s golden crown), none of them have an associated musical
motif like Wagner’s Ring and Tarnhelm.
I believe that Janáček never came to grips with the Wagnerian concept of the
leitmotif; of the two Wagner operas that he is known to have studied, Lohengrin
has themes associated with the principal characters, but – unlike Der Ring – does
not use them in the way described at (b) above. And while Tristan does, it is
clear from Janáček’s article on that opera (see below: Harmony) that his sole
interest in that drama was in the use – and in his opinion the abuse – of chromatic
progressions and suspensions of resolution.
Janáček almost never used leitmotifs even in his mature operas, where, as
in Šárka, ‘the new is the constant expectation’.41 This points to a fundamental
difference between his conception of dramatic action and Wagner’s. In Wagner’s
mature music dramas, the past very frequently bears in on the present. It overshadows
the characters, circumscribes their actions and often leads to monologues in which
they try to come to terms with it. By contrast, in Janáček’s operas action unfolds
in the music in a much more modern way; each new moment is seen as unique
in itself, with short-lived motifs built out of the character’s response to his or her
particular and individual situation at that time. This is a difference between a
basically nineteenth-century, Romantic aesthetic and a modernist one, which is
emerging already in this aspect of Janáček’s first opera, composed only 13 years
before the twentieth century began. Although in several other respects Šárka has
a Wagnerian aesthetic, in this respect the short time-gap between Parsifal (1882)
and Šárka (1887) marks a total divide between two wholly different visions of
dramatic action, and of how music should illuminate it.

Rhythm

Janáček’s rhythms, which were to become extremely complex in his mature work,
are already far more sophisticated in Šárka than those of Wagner, in whose music
dramas the pulse can be a steady 4/4 for many minutes at a time. In the first 15
pages of Šárka’s Act I alone there is an alternation between ³½, ¢, ²¼ and even ¦½
(with whole breves in the orchestral parts, which are uncommon in nineteenth-
century music), and unusual rhythms like %8 (I.7.5ff.) may also be found. This is
slightly surprising, as Janáček did not begin to travel into the villages and notate
Moravian folk music, which abounds in unusual time signatures, until 1888, the
year after the completion of Šárka. After that he began to use a very wide range of
folk-inspired rhythms. For example, in the recruits’ scene in Act I of Jenůfa, the

41
Ewans, Janáček’s Tragic Operas, p. 29. When writing that book in the 1970s I had,
of course, no knowledge of Šárka.
134 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

folk dance is in a regular ²¼; but when the Kostelnička condemns the celebrations
the time changes to þ¾, rapidly followed by a disbelieving response from the chorus
in þ×. The Kostelnička then lays down Jenůfa’s punishment in ݾ, evolving soon to
þ¾; the metre only settles down into ²¼ again after she has gone and the remaining
principal characters gather to sing the quartet.

Harmony

Two years before he composed Šárka, Janáček contributed an article, ‘Richard

Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde’, to Hudební listy.42 It reveals a deep ambivalence.
Janáček quotes one- to two-bar examples of ‘harmonic roughness, coarseness and
even incorrectness’ from the score, and regards Wagner as the polar opposite to his
hero Dvořák, because (he claims) Wagner uses only a limited number of traditional
forms, while ‘Antonín Dvořák’s compositions contain all musical forms’.
Furthermore, he notes Wagner’s continual refusal to resolve movements and
periods in Tristan,43 and asks whether this should be imitated: ‘Should “modern”
dramatic character reside in this exclusive creation of chromatic progressions? Is
there anything Czech even in this “Wagnerianism”?’ (emphasis in the original).
On the other hand, he says that it is almost impossible to describe in words the
‘exquisite beauty’ of one particular chromatic progression in Tristan, and describes
another as ‘especially delightful’. Then he concludes the article with the following
sentence: ‘That what Richard Wagner created in the field of dramatic44 music
belongs to the best is something we have not denied anywhere, either.’
This ambivalent position about Wagnerian harmony is clearly reflected
in Janáček’s actual practice in Šárka. The extreme chromaticism and lack of
resolution deployed by Wagner in Tristan are nowhere to be found; but there
are frequent examples of harmonic practices which are clearly influenced by
Wagner’s score, like the lingering on the first inversion of the mediant chord in
Example 6.9.
There are also some unusual keys, such as G flat major with its related E flat
minor in the opening scene of Act I, and again when Ctirad communes with the
forest;45 and B flat minor when Ctirad goes into the vault of Libuše’s tomb. At first
sight these keys might seem to be chosen for their softness and gentleness; but if

42
Hudební listy 1 (1885), pp. 14–15, 18–109, 22; 2, pp. 29–30. English translation in
Michael Beckerman (ed.), Janáček and his World (Princeton, 2003), pp. 221–5.
43
Janáček claims that out of over 3,000 bars ‘only a little more than 80 bars are
allocated to the formation of resolved movements and periods!’ (emphasis in original).
44
Beckerman omits the emphasis on this word, which is present in the original
Czech. It is important; Janáček (who had himself at this time not yet composed, or even
thought of composing, an opera) clearly implies that though Wagner is an excellent
theatre composer, Dvořák is superior because his achievements encompassed concert
music as well as opera.
45
Šárka, Act I, fig. 10, b. 15ff.
 Wagnerism in Moravia 135

Example 6.9 Janáček, Šárka, Act II, fig. 5, bb. 16–18, Tristanesque harmony

so it is strange that the B flat minor persists even when the warrior maidens arrive
in a most bloodthirsty mood,46 and it recurs at the end of Act II in the love scene,
but then also persists when Šárka summons the maidens to kill Ctirad.47

Conclusion

Though Šárka’s text is highly Wagnerian, the music reconfigures Wagnerian

heroism and love–death into an idiom which foreshadows in many ways the
techniques that Janáček was to develop in his mature works. By this I mean that
the grand heroic emotions characteristic of Wagnerian music drama are all there,
very much in the manner of Der Ring and Tristan – but in an entirely new, Czech
musical idiom, which owes more than a little to Wagner, but also anticipates in
some ways the new and highly individual style which Janáček developed in and
after Jenůfa. Šárka is the debut of a natural born opera composer who, however,
had yet to shake off the kinds of text, and the operatic conventions, of the past. In
this it has much in common with Rienzi, in which Wagner was still in thrall to the
conventions of Meyerbeerian grand opera.
Šárka is not an apprentice work. In its own unique idiom it is self-assured and
theatrically effective. Janáček was right to value it highly when he rediscovered
it. While Šárka is in no way comparable with the realist and expressionist
masterpieces which he was to compose after 1918 (Kát’a Kabanová, Příhody
lišky Bystroušky, Věc Makropulos [The Makropulos Secret] and Z mrtvého
domu [From the House of the Dead]), it is a fascinating curiosity which rewards
repeated listening. Šárka owes a great deal to Wagner; but Janáček’s article on
Tristan und Isolde shows that he had a deep ambivalence about the value of
Wagner’s influence, and particularly his extreme chromaticism, as a potential
basis for the new Czech national tradition of opera. Nonetheless Šárka is
through-composed, and shares many other features of the Wagnerian aesthetic
for music drama, as I hope to have shown earlier in this chapter.

46
Šárka, Act I, fig. 16.
47
Šárka, Act II, fig. 29ff.
This page has been left blank intentionally
 Chapter 7
‘Where the King Spirit becomes manifest’:
Stanisław Wyspiański in Search of the
Polish Bayreuth
Radosław Okulicz-Kozaryn

The main protagonist of this chapter, the prominent Polish author Stanisław
Wyspiański (1869–1907), was greatly influenced, like many of his contemporaries,
by the charm of the eponymous hero of the Polish Romantic masterpiece Król Duch
[The King Spirit, first published in parts in 1847] by Juliusz Słowacki (1809–49).
Increasing fascination with this poem in late nineteenth-century Poland coincided
with the reception of Wagner’s works. Wyspiański’s attempts at emulating these
models are perceptible in his many references to Das Rheingold, Lohengrin and
Parsifal, and in his designs for a national temple on the castle hill in Kraków
modelled after the idea of Bayreuth, and transformed into an Acropolis. There the
King Spirit would, he hoped, become manifest.
To demonstrate how such a brave project was conceived, this chapter
introduces the poem Król Duch and the oeuvre of Wyspiański, who was one of
its ardent followers. This then permits the discussion of syncretism as the mode
of thinking that enabled critics from the turn of the nineteenth century to compare
Wagnerian dramas with the poem, and facilitated Wyspiański’s synthesis of both
these artistic worlds, as scrutinized in the last section of the chapter. However, to
begin with, the role of Nietzschean philosophy needs careful consideration, as it
became the stimulus both for the absorption and transformation of Wagner, and for
the reinterpretation of Słowacki.

Nietzsche

No other critic and thinker has done so much to enhance Wagner’s reputation
than Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). Indisputably influential in Central
Europe, Nietzsche transformed public opinion of the composer even as his own
enthusiasm receded,1 and their combined impact was felt keenly in Poland. In
his Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen [Untimely Meditations] Nietzsche described

1
See Robert. B. Pynset, Question of Identity: Czech and Slovak Ideas of Nationality
and Personality (Budapest, 1994).
138 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

‘the reviver of pure drama, the discoverer of the place of art in true human
society, the poetic exponent of bygone views of life, Wagner the philosopher,
the historian, the aesthete and the critic, the master of language, the student and
creator of myths.’2 Subsequent attempts to caricature and ridicule such a portrait
only enriched and enlivened the image of the composer, seemingly against the
will of the author of Der Fall Wagner [The Case of Wagner] (1888). To be an
adherent of both Nietzsche and Wagner was not inconceivable; on the contrary,
acceptance of both was not merely a consequence of following fashion, but
might actually enhance one’s creative potential, stimulate a search for synthesis,
and trigger a more comprehensive view of cultural development.
Valery Gostomski (1854–1915), for example, was both a cosmopolitan literary
and music critic, but at the same time an advocate of the national movement. He
was a pilgrim to Bayreuth and a promoter of Wagner’s art,3 but simultaneously
a faithful (if critically inclined) reader of Nietzsche. He emphasized that the
cause of the conflict between these two ‘rulers of the contemporary spirit’ was
their mutually held idealization of the ‘comprehensive and healthy development
of human existence at its highest potential and most intense natural strength, as
revealed long ago in the ancient tragedies of Greek culture.’4 The liberal critic
Ignacy Matuszewski (1858–1919), too, saw in Nietzsche an artist comparable
to Wagner, ‘an author of works that were the finest realization of subjective
impressions, thoughts, and feelings, and the forerunner of the ideal of the
interconnection of all arts.’5 In his Słowacki i nowa sztuka [Słowacki and the
New Art],6 to which reference is made below, Matuszewski compared the

2
‘Der Erneuerer des einfachen Dramas, der Entdecker der Stellung der Künste
in der wahren menschlichen Gesellschaft, der dichtende Erklärer vergangener
Lebensbetrachtungen, der Philosoph, der Historiker, der Ästhetiker und Kritiker Wagner,
der Meister der Sprache, der Mytholog und Mythopoet.’ Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘Richard
Wagner in Bayreuth’, in Karl Schlechta (ed.), Friedrich Nietzsche: Werke in drei Bänden
[Friedrich Nietzsche: Works, in three volumes], vol. 1, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen
[Untimely Meditations] (Munich, 1954), p. 376.
3
See Magdalena Dziadek, Polska krytyka muzyczna w latach 1890–1914 [Polish
music criticism in 1890–1914], vol. 1, Koncepcje i zagadnienia [Concepts and issues]
(Katowice, 2002), p. 145.
4
‘Zdrowego rozwoju jestestwa ludzkiego w całej pełni i w najwyższym natężeniu
sił jego żywotnych, jak ono się ujawniło niegdyś, przed wiekami, w “tragicznej” kulturze
greckiej.’ Walery Gostomski, ‘Tragedia myśliciela (Fryderyk Nietzsche i jego ideał
humanitarny)’ [The tragedy of a thinker (Friedrich Nietzsche and his humanitarian ideal)],
Part 2, Biblioteka Warszawska 1/3 (1906), p. 140.
5
‘Twórcą dzieł będących najdoskonalszą realizacją subiektywnych wrażeń, myśli i
uczuć, a także prekursorem idei przenikania się wszystkich sztuk.’ Tomasz Weiss, Fryderyk
Nietzsche w piśmiennictwie polskim lat 1890–1914 [Friedrich Nietzsche in Polish literary
studies 1890–1914] (Wrocław, 1961), p. 46.
6
See Ignacy Matuszewski, Słowacki i nowa sztuka [Słowacki and the New Art]
(Warsaw, 1902).
 ‘Where the King Spirit becomes manifest’ 139

achievements of the two Germans with those of Słowacki, especially in the

latter’s magnum opus, Król Duch.

Embodiments of The King Spirit

Słowacki wrote his meta-psychic, palingenetic epic poem Król Duch during
a period of highly intensive artistry. The first person is used to relate its main
character’s story, a literary solution that conveys how the object’s perspective is
largely subsumed by that of the subject – in other words, engulfed by the lyrical
element. Matuszewski proposed that Słowacki’s work be called ‘a mood epic’.7
When writing the poem, Słowacki modified the concept of the ‘epic’, even
imparting a dramatic element by introducing a sort of a dialogue between sorcerers
– a meeting of Slavic bards.8
Król Duch is organically linked with Słowacki’s other mystic works, also
designated genesian, a term derived from the title of the earlier poem Genesis
z Ducha [Genesis of the Spirit] (1844). The breadth of imagination and subtlety
of expression displayed in Król Duch is impressive. Had it been available in
translation to enthusiasts and scholars of Western Romanticism, it may have
provided a level of aesthetic and intellectual satisfaction comparable to Turner’s
paintings or Coleridge’s poems.9 It might also have served as an example of
the Romantic ambition to create art that – like the Bible – could serve as an
archetype for books encapsulating and embodying the physical and spiritual
dimensions of the world.10 Król Duch was discovered and admired by Polish
modernists, upon whom it bestowed many benefits, the most important of which
was perhaps its unprecedented artistic courage.11 Its impact in the 1870s was such
that it encouraged opposition to the dominant ‘realistic’ conventions. In the late

7
Ignacy Matuszewski, Słowacki i nowa sztuka (modernizm) [Słowacki and the New
Art (Modernism)], ed. S. Sandler (Warsaw, 1965), p. 154ff.
8
See Radosław Okulicz-Kozaryn, ‘Druidyczna Litwa Słowackiego’ [The Druid
Lithuania of Słowacki], in J. Borowczyk and Z. Przychodniak (eds), Słowacki współczesnych
i potomnych [Słowacki for present and future generations] (Poznań, 2000).
9
The relationship between the poetry of Słowacki and the paintings of the English
Romantic painter was noticed by Wiesław Juszczak, ‘Pejzaż według Króla-Ducha’
[Landscape according to Król Duch], Teksty 3 (Wrocław, 1976). It is also mentioned by
Czesław Miłosz, The History of Polish Literature (Berkeley, 1983).
10
See Zygmunt Łempicki, ‘Bücherwelt und wirkliche Welt. Ein Beitrag zur
Wesenserfassung der Romantik,’ Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft
und Geistesgeschichte 3 (1925), pp. 339–86.
11
There are however opinions to the contrary. Authors who were shaped in the
atmosphere of Poland between the world wars – particularly such figures as Czesław
Miłosz who sympathized with a widely understood avant garde movement – felt resentment
towards representatives of the former literary generation; they criticized them for their
abstract and weird language, which they partly blame on the popularity Słowacki’s poetry.
140 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

1880s and 1890s, the poem radically captured the imagination of Polish artists
to such an extent that they held to its conventions well before they were affected
by the spell of Bayreuth or the teachings of Nietzsche. The movement stirred
by Słowacki’s genesian poetry was perceptible in the early 1890s in Poland and
clearly predated (and simultaneously prepared the ground for) the ‘nascent cult of
Wagner at the dawn of the new century’.12 Later, both Nietzsche, as an admirer of
‘strength and independence of mind and talent’, and Wagner, as ‘an embodiment
of titanic strength and self-reliance’,13 enhanced the impact of Słowacki on their
contemporaries, authenticating the yearning for the radical transcendence of
human limitations expressed in Król Duch.
The protagonist of Król Duch in successive parts of the poem takes on
different identities: a knight–ruler; a poet–bard; a leader; and a guide on the path
to perfection. At the same time, the poem speaks of the various transformations of
the world necessary for reaching new and more perfect forms, all at the cost of the
unspeakable pain of particular individuals and their propensity for self-sacrifice.
The deepest secrets of nature become part of the protagonist’s biography, but he
relates them from the inside, as if from his own genuine experience, as a seer.
In Król Duch the gift of insight into the very essence of things, so much desired
by Romantics, clearly dominated the oppressive sense of the unbridgeable gulf
between the inner world and its expression in words. For Słowacki, the ideal of
the language of artistic expression was to be found in light. He celebrated the
art of colours – stained-glass windows and painting – and only after that the art
of sounds. The poetry of Król Duch, though its substance is language, reaches
‘the final domain of raptures’,14 in which the angelic language of light is utilized.
The poetry’s language communicates to the sense-organs, through them reaching
to the depths of oceans and graves, or even places where shapes undergo total
deconstruction and matter decomposes, thus connecting the high with the low and
the incipient with the ultimate. Analogically, poetry can capture and show what is
important; it can explain the interdependence between different levels of existence
and stages in the development of the world. This is why it is capable of explicating
and combining all types of artistic expression. It is easy to deduce, then, that in
these endeavours Słowacki drifted towards Symbolism. Some even claimed that
he implemented the tenets of this trend some 40 years prior to its full development,
that he was a symbolist avant la lettre, and the best of them.

12
‘rodzacy się u progu nowego stulecia kult Wagnera’. Magdalena Dziadek, ‘Polska
krytyka muzyczna w latach 1890–1914’ [Polish musical criticism in 1890–1914], vol. 1,
Koncepcje i zagadnienia [Concepts and issues] (Katowice, 2002), p. 314.
13
Zofia Daszyńska, Nietzsche – Zaratustra. Studium literackie [Nietzsche –
Zarathustra: A literary study] (Kraków, 1896), p. 34.
14
See Juliusz Słowacki, ‘Król Duch’, ed. Julian Krzyżanowski, in Dzieła [Works],
3rd edn, general ed. Julian Krzyżanowski (Wrocław, 1959), vol. 5, Król Duch; see also
Juliusz Słowacki, ‘Genesis z Ducha’, ed. Władysław Floryan, in Dzieła, vol. 12, Pisma
prozą [Prose works], p. 29.
 ‘Where the King Spirit becomes manifest’ 141

In Słowacki’s intention, Król Duch unveils the true structure of being, thanks
to the synthesis of all available aesthetic means, and this was perceived by its
later admirers. For generations of artists whose artistic maturation fell between the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it really did become ‘The Book’, a
reservoir of truths and a treasury of every kind of beauty, a source of inspiration for
poets, painters and composers. Too numerous to list here, they co-created an artistic
and intellectual movement called Młoda Polska [Young Poland].15 Młoda Polska
sought to discover the fundamental principles of the musical and plastic arts; in the
spirit of the era, they sought to portray the reciprocal connectedness of Słowacki’s
works, to grasp their totality. Such an approach encouraged comparative studies,
including references to Nietzsche or Wagner. The most comprehensive work of
this kind was the aforementioned 1902 treatise of Ignacy Matuszewski, whose full
title has three components: ‘Słowacki i nowa sztuka (Modernism)’ [Słowacki and
the New Art (Modernism)]; ‘Twórczość Słowackiego w świetle poglądów estetyki
nowoczesnej’ [The art of Słowacki through the view of modern aesthetics]; and
‘Studyum krytyczno-porównawcze’ [Critical-comparative study]. Matuszewski
eagerly compared his observations of the poet with analyses of other authors, more
often foreign than Polish. Initially he discussed Słowacki’s oeuvre in the context
of Romanticism and the works of Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855), and only then
against numerous other ‘-isms’, including pre-Raphaelitism, Symbolism, neo-
Mysticism, Nietzscheanism, or the paintings of Gustav Moreau, Arnold Böcklin,
Max Klinger, and Edward Burne-Jones. From the wide range of Richard Wagner’s
achievements, Matuszewski chose for his analysis Der Ring, in which context the
name of Stanislaw Wyspiański appeared.

Stanisław Wyspiański and Kraków

Stanislaw Wyspiański – a painter, glass painter, graphic designer, stage designer,

playwright, director, poet, and the originator of modern Polish theatre – may
be known transitorily to more attentive English-language readers from ‘half-
sentence’ mentions in Modernism: A Guide to European Literature 1890–1930 by
Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane,16 or from a catalogue of the exhibition
International Arts and Crafts.17 Wyspiański is unquestionably one of the most
outstanding Polish artists and theatre visionaries at the turn of the twentieth
century. Though he died at only 38, he left an impressive artistic output of nearly
20 dramas, some of which still feature regularly in the Polish theatrical repertory.
To these can be added a study in performance theory, Studium o Hamlecie [A

15
See also Chapter 8 for further discussion of the Młoda Polska movement.
16
Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane, Modernism: A Guide to European
Literature 1890–1930 (London, 1987), p. 554.
17
Andrzej Szczerski, ‘Central Europe’, in K. Livingstone and L. Parry (eds),
International Arts and Crafts (London, 2005), p. 248.
142 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

Study of Hamlet] (1906), alongside poems and copious correspondence. As a

graduate of The School of Fine Arts in Kraków and a student of the Colarossi
Academy, Wyspiański made successful contributions to other artistic fields such
as book illustration and interior design. Among his plastic art output the most
famous are small pastel portraits, and monumental designs intended for stained
glass but for the most part never actually realized. Thus he was a multi-faceted
artist. However, to attain a complete artistic education, which at the turn of the
twentieth century implied expertise in the trinity of arts, Wyspiański required one
further competence: musical qualifications.
The absence of musical skills, coupled with a lack of a group of co-workers
well prepared and devoted to him (despite his efforts to find one), meant that
Wyspiański never realized his wish to create an opera.18 He had hoped to find a
musician of the same calibre as Wagner, but one who would submit to his will
and follow his instructions, rendered in a Nietzsche-like authoritarian manner.
His letters to Henryk Opieński, an old classmate who subsequently became a
composer, contain detailed guidelines that left little room for creativity on the
part of the co-worker. For this reason, Opieński agreed only to write music for
a song from the drama Legenda, staged in 1897.19 Opieński commented on this
situation with great tact, deeming it ‘incredibly difficult’ and ‘possibly pointless’,
even unfeasible, to transform Wyspiański’s dramas into operas, stating simply: ‘let
them retain their own musical spirit.’20
Faithful to his ideals and indifferent to external requirements, Wyspiański was
unable to fulfil many of his artistic ideas. Today it is difficult even to imagine
what final form they might have taken, but given the consistency and coherence
of his creative intentions – in spite of his involvement in so many disciplines –
it seems viable to surmise the greatness of his artistic vision, in its wholeness,
on the basis of one near-complete project. The stained-glass windows and
polychrome decorations that Wyspiański designed in 1897 for the Franciscan
church in Kraków, located adjacent to the Royal Path, depict the history of

18
Anna Wypych-Gawrońska, ‘Synteza sztuk w dramacie młodopolskim (na
przykładzie wczesnych utworów Stanisława Wyspiańskiego’ [A synthesis of arts in a Young
Poland drama], in Hanna Ratuszna and Radosław Sioma (eds), Młodopolska synteza sztuk
[The Young Poland synthesis of the arts] (Toruń, 2010), pp. 245–57.
19
On the basis of this melody Opieński composed a string quartet performed in
Poznań in 1926; see Stanisław Wyspiański, Dzieła zebrane [Collected works], ed. Leon
Płoszewski, vol. 1, Daniel, Królowa Korony Polskiej, Legenda I, Warszawianka [Daniel,
The Queen of the Polish Crown, Legend I, Warszawianka] (Kraków, 1964), pp. 353–4.
20
Henryk Opieński, ‘Znaczenie muzyki w dramatach Wyspiańskiego’ and ‘Muzyka
Wyspiańskiego’ [The importance of music in Wyspiański’s dramas] and [Wyspiański’s
music], in Wyspiański w oczach współczesnych [Wyspiański through the eyes of
contemporaries], ed. Leon Płoszewski (2 vols, Kraków, 1971), vol. 1, pp. 159 and 170.
Quoted in Anna Wypych-Gawrońska, ‘Wyspiański a teatr muzyczny’ [Wyspiański and
musical theatre], Pamiętnik Teatralny 3–4 (2007), p. 84.
 ‘Where the King Spirit becomes manifest’ 143

the universe in a series of pictures. Bóg Ojciec [God, the Father] – also called
Stań się [Let it be done] – connects the act of creation to an historical topic in
Stygmatyzacja św. Franciszka [St Francis’ stigmata], and then to local history via
the image of Błogosławiona Salomea [Blessed Salome of Poland]. With artistic
audacity, Wyspiański thus shifted from the image of primary chaos to local nature,
represented by plants from the vicinity of Kraków that he had studied intensely
and often used as motifs in his designs. In general, his art, despite its anti-realistic
character, is considered the work of a ‘poet of space’ [poeta przestrzeni],21 and as
an ‘expression of the drama of the landscape’ [dramatyczność gruntu].22 Almost
completely associated with the former capital of Poland, Wyspiański’s art imbues
Kraków with multiple meanings, thus making it not only the spiritual centre of
the nation, but also a privileged point in the universe. We should not, however,
read it as an act of unreflective reverence toward the motherland, so common in
nineteenth- and twentieth-century art in the wake of the spread of nationalism. On
the contrary, Wyspiański’s work is steeped in criticism, rooted in the same arsenal
of thought that – in its ambitious version – sought to revise tradition and prepare
new ground for a national community.23 It is at this juncture in Wyspiański’s art
that the ideas of Wagner and Nietzsche were mutually supportive and yet at the
same time clashed. On the one hand, Wagner encouraged the renewal of art and the
foundation of a human community. On the other, Nietzsche was seen as both an
adherent of Wagner, but also a staunch enemy of all the decadent features inherent
in the composer’s art, viewed by Nietzsche as anti-Hellenistic and promoting in
society those features, which – in the philosopher’s opinion – should be discarded.
Almost all of Wyspiański’s artistic life was connected with Kraków. Although
the city did not give him an ‘understanding’ welcome during his formative artistic
years, it later reciprocated his loyalty by exhibiting his art in a museum named
after him, by organizing theatre competitions of his dramas on stage, and holding
academic conferences devoted to his works. Thanks to these events, Wyspiański
is more and more known to lovers of the city and to tourists from all over the
world. Once attracted by Wyspiański’s art, one soon discovers that many of
Kraków’s institutions either explicitly or implicitly bear his mark and preserve

21
Jan Błoński, Wyspiański wielokrotnie [Wyspiański repeated], lectures in French, ed.
M. Borowski and M. Sugiera, trans. J. and K. Błońscy (Kraków, 2007), pp. 136ff.
22
Przemysław Mączewski, ‘Wyspiański a Wagner’ [Wyspiański vs. Wagner],
Part 4, Myśl narodowa 46 (1929), p. 264. See also Wacław Borowy, ‘Łazienki a Noc
listopadowa Wyspiańskiego: uwagi historyczno-literackie’ [Lazienki and November Night
by Wyspiański: historical and literary notes], Studia i rozprawy, ed. T. Mikulski, S. Sandler
and J. Ziomek (Wrocław, 1952), p. 242.
23
See, among others Ernst Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, 1983); Benedict
Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
(New York, 1991); Nikodem Bończa-Tomaszewski, Demokratyczna geneza nacjonalizmu:
intelektualne korzenie ruchu narodowo-demokratycznego [Democratic genesis of
nationalism: intellectual roots of the national-democratic movement] (Warsaw, 2001).
144 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

his memory. This even applies to Kraków’s famous bells, which the artist featured
in his unique drama Akropolis, by writing lyrics to fit their ‘music’. Wyspiański’s
Kraków is a kind of secondary city incorporated into the real one, yet at the same
time extending the limits of imagination. At times, annual festivals of his dramas
have been instituted; an event dedicated exclusively to his plays, or ‘something the
English call a fringe’24 (think Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon, or, even more
appropriately, Wagner festivals in Bayreuth) have been discussed since his death,25
though they have not yet come to fruition.
Wyspiański did not openly show off his predilection for Wagner’s music;
neither did he reveal his dependence on Słowacki. Thus it is difficult to state
what exactly led him to conceal, even deny, traces of his fascination with both
authors, whether it was Bloom’s theory of ‘the anxiety of influence’,26 a striving
to be original, a Nietzschean need to assert one’s value, or a Baudelairean defence
against the reader through the use of misleading tropes. Wyspiański was eager
to share his thoughts only with those kindred spirits who took up the challenge
of new interpretations. He opposed all kinds of fads, current opinions, and any
notion of keeping up appearances. By any account, he himself managed to avoid
becoming a victim of interpretation, worrying that being ‘placed on a pedestal’
as a national poet or visionary could have deprived him of his genuine influence
over the nation. Perhaps this is why he did not rejoice when in 1901, during one
of many stagings of Wesele [The Wedding], he was decorated with a laurel wreath.
This symbolized spiritual leadership, but what Wyspiański truly desired was
to create a kind of art that would not only rekindle in Poles the need to regain
freedom, but also create the need to rebuild the country from scratch. This could
be seen as mirroring the Fiat [Let it be done] depicted in the stained-glass window
in the Franciscan church. Seen in this light, such an act simultaneously assumed a

24
‘to, co Anglosasi nazywają the fringe’. Tymon Terlecki, ‘O Wyspiańskim – w setną
rocznicę urodzin’ [On Wyspiański on his hundredth birthday], Wiadomości, Na antenie
[News, on air] 71 (1969), p. 1; quoted in Violetta Wejs-Milewska, ‘Stanisław Wyspiański
w teatrologicznej refleksji Tymona Terleckiego’ [Stanisław Wyspiański in the theatrical
reflections of Tymon Terlecki], in Małgorzata Okulicz-Kozaryn, Mateusz Bourkane, and
Michał Haake (eds), Przemyśleć wszystko … Stanisława Wyspiańskiego modernizacja
wyobraźni zbiorowej [Think over everything … Modernization of collective imagination
by Stanisław Wyspiański] (Poznań, 2009), p. 346.
25
Jan Kleczyński, ‘Stanisław Wyspiański,’ Tygodnik Ilustrowany 50 (1907); this
article was recently mentioned by Katarzyna Wolanin, ‘Wpływ działalności Ryszarda
Wagnera na wczesną twórczość dramatyczną Stanisława Wyspiańskiego’ [The influence
of the works of Richard Wagner on the dramas of Stanisław Wyspiański], in Ratuszna and
Sioma, Młodopolska synteza sztuk, p. 266.
26
Bloom’s interpretation of Wyspiański’s views was presented by Magdalena Popiel
in Wyspiański: Mitologia nowoczesnego artysty [Wyspiański: mythology of a modern
artist] (Kraków, 2007), pp. 25–109. She analyses the struggle of the artist with his three
great predecessors: Jan Matejko, Adam Mickiewicz, and William Shakespeare; the part
concerning his dependence on Słowacki remains then to be written.
 ‘Where the King Spirit becomes manifest’ 145

nationalistic and pagan sensibility. The artist thus accepted for himself the role of a
demiurge, similar to that which Słowacki assigned to his protagonist in Król Duch.

Wagnerism and Syncretism

It is clear, then, that Wyspiański followed the lead of the Romantic poets so adored
by his compatriots, whose ambition of capturing a collective imagination he shared.
He wished to replace the Romantics’ role as the nation’s spiritual leaders, forcing
his fellow countrymen to rethink their legacy by confronting them with renewed
concepts of nature and humanity, history, religion, and myth, all of which were
changing dramatically because of rapid increases in knowledge and theoretical
developments.
The extent of Wagner’s fame suggests that echoes of his art, including
syncretic poetics,27 do not seem surprising and should not require additional
explanation, scholarly commentary, or identification as an element in which
all senses are focused. In general, in syncretic art the hierarchy of references is
difficult to establish. When Matuszewski compared Der Ring (which he referred to
as ‘The Legend of Legends’ derived from remote pre-Germanic myths) with Król
Duch (based on equally remote historical Polish and primarily Slavic legends),
he called the former ‘a lyrical synthesis of history and myths, dreams and truths,
nostalgia and beliefs, sighs, and the inner struggles of a poet-visionary.’28 The
constituent elements of the poem did not comply with what is called ‘the classical
measure’ and thus were ‘enwrapped with the mist of infinity.’29 Though he knew
perfectly well of the change in Nietzsche’s views on Wagner,30 Matuszewski did
not hesitate to employ expressions formerly perceived by the philosopher as a
‘positive element of modern art’,31 even while in Der Fall Wagner or Jeneseits von
Gut und Böse Wagner’s art was unmercifully derided. In this respect, Matuszewski
showed greater distrust towards Nietzsche than towards himself: he did not intend
to ‘recover’ or resign from the sophistication and polymorphism of modern
civilization in favour of Greek simplicity, or to escape the charm of modern art and
instead restore classical form. He thereby remained faithful in his interest in and
passion for works featuring the inflamed and unbridled imagination, ‘encompassing
not a certain sphere of existence but the whole universe, the whole magnitude of

27
About ‘legendary syncretism’ and ‘mythical-historical syncretism’ with reference
to Wagner’s art see Mary A. Cicora, Modern Myths and Wagnerian Deconstructions:
Hermeneutic Approaches to Wagner’s Music-Dramas (Westport, 2000), p. 60, p. 76ff.
28
‘Liryczną syntezą dziejów i mitu, snu i prawdy, tęsknot i wierzeń, westchnień i
walk wewnętrznych poety-wieszcza.’ Matuszewski, Słowacki i nowa sztuka, pp. 203–4.
29
Ibid., p. 203.
30
Ibid., chapters on ‘Modernizm i romantyzm’ and ‘Indywidualizm. Słowacki i
Nietzsche’.
31
Ibid., p. 203.
146 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

cosmic life.’32 He was mesmerized by the opulence of this chaotic imagination,

and believed that ‘in this apparent chaos works the creative mind of a demiurge,
who gathers all scattered elements around one centre of gravity.’33 Unarguably,
this opinion is too general and rather blunt for the purpose of comparison. It speaks
more of the character of the epoch than of the important interrelation between the
aforementioned works of Słowacki and other authors.
Matuszewski encountered a similar challenge in Wagner’s and Słowacki’s
works when trying, despite his many doubts, to approach them as examples of the
synthesis of arts, a concept that may be considered a reflection of syncretic artistic
practice on an expressive level, and its crowning achievement. But different
poetics, individual creative methods, or even individual works of art utilize varying
processes of joining diverging artistic means to create one whole. Much too often
do we speak about the synthesis of arts rather than syntheses of arts. For example,
Gesamtkunstwerk is treated as one expression of the ideal, though Wagner’s
concept of art is only a specific case of merging poetry and music with theatrical
performance, strongly marked by his personality and certain measurable aims. The
composer himself, who once praised the ‘cooperation of all arts’ and joined them
into a unified whole in Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft, also stated that ‘only that art
is free which is able to express all the talents of an individual.’34 However, Wagner
did not fully appreciate the fine arts, and relegated them to a subsidiary role. ‘As
a dramatist Wagner was satisfied with combining two arts: poetry and music’,
explained Przemysław Mączewski, at the same time crediting him for extolling
the ideal of a totally integrated art.35 By holding to this view, Mączewski saw
Wagner’s art as a key stage in the ‘process of merging all genera of art according
to the spirit of poetic–musical synthesis’,36 an equivalent of which was Słowacki’s
poem. This is why Matuszewski, the author of the ‘Critical–Comparative Study’,
did not hesitate long over the appropriateness of comparing works that were so
formally divergent. Once he took into account the interdisciplinary nature of
both works, he quickly dismissed any doubts. Yet these doubts were sustained
by his follower, Wacław Tadeusz Dobrzyński, in his extensive study of Wagner.
Though he approved of most of Matuszewski’s theses, Dobrzyński in fact did not
accept their basic assumptions. He considered it improper to omit mention of the

32
‘Obejmującej nie pewną określoną sferę bytu, lecz cały wszechświat, cały ogrom
życia kosmicznego.’ Ibid., p. 204.
33
‘W łonie tego pozornego chaosu działa twórcza myśl artysty demiurga, który
wszystkie rozproszone pierwiastki grupuje dokoła jednego punktu ciężkości.’ Ibid., pp.
204–5.
34
Richard Wagner, Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft: Gesammelte Werke (Leipzig, 1914),
vol. 11: Oper und Drama, p. 76.
35
‘Jako autor dramatyczny zadowolił się Wagner spółką dwu tylko sztuk: poezji i
muzyki.’ Mączewski, ‘Wyspiański a Wagner’, p. 234.
36
‘procesie stapiania się różnych gatunków sztuki w duchu syntezy nastrojowo-
muzycznej.’ Matuszewski, Słowacki i nowa Sztuka, p. 140.
 ‘Where the King Spirit becomes manifest’ 147

effect on the imagination exercised by differences in the words, images or music

employed. He even claimed that there were only few individuals who were able
to merge impressions synaesthetically; all other recipients had a ‘right to expect
from an author a masterpiece which would render all things the author “sees and
hears”.’37 This is why

an exceptionally colourful and melodic poem by Słowacki, with which Wagner’s

poem cannot compete with regard to the colour or sound, gives only a foretaste
of the senses with which Wagner’s work profusely abounds.38

It seems that Dobrzyński’s intention was to make the subtle, poetic beauty of
Słowacki’s poems accessible to a wider audience, which, in his opinion, was
possible only through a form that was inherent in Wagner’s musical theatre.
The master from Bayreuth claimed that ‘poetry, though it operates with diverse
concepts and is very much aware of its purpose, is not actually free.’ As Mączewski
paraphrased Wagner’s thought, ‘poetry was actually freed by a live actor and by
cooperation with other arts.’39 This thought was not alien to Słowacki, who himself
wrote several dramas with a tendency towards pageantry. Furthermore, in Król
Duch, to reiterate an earlier point, he tried to employ certain dramatic strategies,40
though he also strongly believed in the self-sufficient power of the word.
So when Matuszewski expressed his views to the Młoda Polska artists, and
when he wrote that Wyspiański was an ‘outstanding painter and poet, [who]
achieved great results in his theatre dramas by combining poetry and the plastic
arts in the spirit of Wagner’s ideal of “the synthesis of all arts”’,41 he made
Wyspiański the heir to Król Duch, and one who wished to model his art after Der
Ring. This comparative critical method does not permit any definitive proposition
as to what in Wyspiański’s syncretic art should be credited to Słowacki and

37
‘Prawo żądać od twórcy takiego arcydzieła, które by nadało wszystkim “widzeniom”
i “słyszeniom” autora kształt dostępny.’ Wacław Tadeusz Dobrzyński, Ryszard Wagner.
Szkic krytyczny [Richard Wagner: a critical essay] (Kiev, 1908), p. 65.
38
‘Niesłychanie barwny i melodyjny wiersz Słowackiego, z którym wiersz Wagnera
w zawody iść nie może, tam, gdzie idzie o barwę lub dźwięk, daje nam jedynie przedsmak
tego, czym hojnie nasyca odpowiednie zmysły nasze Wagner.’ Ibid.
39
‘Poezja, choć operuje pojęciami i ma największą swego celu świadomość, nie
jest w istocie wolna. Wyzwala ją żywy aktor i współdziałanie sztuk innych.’ Mączewski,
‘Wyspiański a Wagner’, p. 232.
40
See among others Małgorzata Sokalska, ‘Teatralność Słowackiego: W świecie
teatru i opery’ [Theatre characteristics in Słowacki: In the world of theatre and opera], in
Maria Cieśla-Korytowska (ed.), Ja – poeta. Juliusz Słowacki [I am a poet: Juliusz Słowacki]
(Kraków, 2010).
41
‘Znakomity malarz i poeta osiągał często, zwłaszcza w swoich utworach
scenicznych, bardzo oryginalne i piękne wyniki połączonego działania poezji i plastyki w
duch wagnerowskiego ideału “syntezy wszelkich sztuk”.’ Matuszewski, Słowacki i nowa
sztuka, p. 317.
148 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

what to Wagner; and indeed, compiling any register of interdependencies would

contribute very little to the debate. Nevertheless, such considerations allow us to
ask whether Wyspiański, so conscious of the uniqueness and power of his voice,
did not in fact adopt certain elements from authors he had admired in order to
construct ‘new’ artistic visions. Did he only borrow the subject matter and some
general guidelines, or did he combine both conceptions and transform them into
new unique masterpieces?

The Acropolis by the Vistula River

That such questions are valid seems to be corroborated by biographical data. It

is known that from his youth Wyspiański was interested in Wagner’s art, and
from 1890, during his ‘grand tour’ to Munich and Dresden, this interest became
insatiable.42 This fascination proved both permanent and all-consuming. Troubled
by a lack of thorough musical knowledge, but at the same time touched by a desire
and need for it, Wyspiański was able to fulfil his desire only through the works of
Wagner. As one author wrote in his memoirs of the artist:

I could testify to the influence of Wagner’s music on Wyspiański, as I played

to him for several months continuously, almost every day, whole acts from
Lohengrin and Parsifal, and some fragments of Tannhäuser from the piano
scores, together with the texts. He was not interested in other operas, in other
artists, such as Beethoven, Chopin, or Tchaikovsky, in spite of the fact that I
chose their most dramatic pieces […]. Wyspiański would sit in a rocking
chair, in clouds of tobacco smoke, with his face flushed, and would demand as
much Lohengrin as possible; he was in the process of writing Bolesław Śmiały
[Bolesław the Bold].43

From the time he started writing plays, Wyspiański assigned the most sublime
parts to singing roles, or else required musical accompaniment. Before Bolesław
Śmiały (1903) and his other more mature works, Wyspiański had attempted to

42
Alicja Okońska, “Wyspiański a muzyka’ [Wyspiański and music], Muzyka 2
(1960), pp. 55–8.
43
‘O wpływie, jaki miała na Wyspiańskiego Wagnerowska muzyka – mogłam się
przekonać, grając mu przez szereg miesięcy prawie codziennie całe akty z Lohengrina,
Parsifala i niektóre ustępy z Tannhäusera z partytur fortepianowych z tekstem. Inne
opery nie zajmowały go, inni kompozytorzy, jak Beethoven, Chopin, Czajkowski, mimo
że wybierałam jak najwięcej dramatyczne utwory […]. Siedział zatem Wyspiański w
bujającym fotelu, w obłokach dymu tytoniowego, z wypiekami na twarzy i domagał się jak
najwięcej Lohengrina, pisał wtenczas właśnie Bolesława Śmiałego.’ Julia Nowakowa, ‘O
zainteresowaniach muzycznych Wyspiańskiego’ [On musical interests of Wyspiański], in
Płoszewski, Wyspiański w oczach współczesnych, vol. 2, p. 182.
 ‘Where the King Spirit becomes manifest’ 149

write a libretto for Opieński to set to music. In 1892 he began writing a libretto
entitled Wanda, which later underwent many changes before publication in 1897
under the significant title of Legenda.44
Many elements of Legenda resemble Der Ring – in particular Das Rheingold –
including the title, the overall concept, elements of stage design, and many motivic
references, as well as the frequent use of archaisms. A deeper resemblance can be
seen in both works’ primary meaning: an attempt to build myths about the birth of
nations.45 However, elements drawn from Das Rheingold are placed in a different
context by Wyspiański; he literally (and figuratively) submerges the plot. The first
act of Legenda takes place during the twilight years of the ailing but once powerful
King Krak, in the ‘wooden Wawel Castle’ [zamek wawelski drewniany]46 besieged
by Germans. The second act takes place in the ‘depths of the Vistula River’ [głębi
Wisły], where Wawel Castle can be seen.47 It is to the water kingdom that Krak is
taken after his death. There, in a daydream, he prophetically sees that his castle,
though dilapidated and besieged, ‘shines in the sun’ [w słońcu stoi],48 and that
his country is a land of plenty. This vision of a castle alight in sunshine evokes
one of Słowacki’s favourite images, a sun-soaked Jerusalem. Into this underwater
dominion, among the nymphs of the Vistula and other tributaries of the Rhine,
comes Wanda – the courageous daughter of Krak – and a water deity, Wiślana.
After conquering her enemies, Wanda then sacrifices herself by plunging into
the Vistula and drowning. As Krzysztof Kozłowski acutely observes in his study
‘Podwodna Walhalla’ [Underwater Valhalla], Wyspiański intended for her ‘to join
with the dignified king-warriors in order to re-establish the connection between
the underwater world and Wawel, which now stands shining in the sun. It thus acts
as a symbol of a nation whose destiny is fulfilled through sacrifice and heroism.’49
The Vistula thereby becomes the custodian of the most precious of national
treasures: myths of heroes and heroic virtues. Opieński was asked to compose
music reflecting the river’s flowing waters, conveyed through the fairy tongues
of water nymphs in melodies that could be transformed into a human language.
Myth and tragedy, following the Nietzschean formula derived from Bayreuth,

44
The drama did not satisfy Wyspiański in this form, and in 1904 it was altered, and
published in 1905 under the same title.
45
Krzysztof Kozłowski, ‘Podwodna Walhalla. “Legenda I” Stanisława Wyspiańskiego
i “Złoto Renu” Richarda Wagnera [Underwater Valhalla: Stanisław Wyspiański’s Legenda
I and Richard Wagner’s Das Rheingold], in Okulicz-Kozaryn et al., Przemyśleć wszystko,
pp. 179–94 (p. 184).
46
Wyspiański, Dzieła zebrane, vol. 1, p. 61.
47
Ibid., p. 125.
48
Wyspiański, Legenda, ibid., p. 140.
49
‘Wyspiański każe jej zatem dołączyć do czcigodnego grona wojów, tak żeby
potwierdzona została ponownie łączność miedzy światem podwodnym a Wawelem, który
jaśnieje teraz w słońcu. Jest bowiem symbolem narodu, którego sens wypełnia się w ofierze
i bohaterstwie.’ Kozłowski, ‘Podwodna Wallhala’, p. 193.
150 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

arose ‘from the spirit of music’ [aus dem Geiste der Musik]. By resorting, like
Wagner, to alliteration, ‘which might be perceived as an equivalent of Wagner’s
Stabreim’,50 Wyspiański hoped to fix in art the moment of transformation from
the pre-linguistic into language itself. He informed Opieński that he expunged
Legenda of literary language, and replaced it with ‘a stout, old, and only slightly
polished, rather rough tongue.’51 Its appeal is effective only when all arts cooperate
and mingle, thus expressing the unity of skills, senses, and elements that comprise
a nation, a human being, nature.
Along with other authors, Mączewski concluded at the time that ‘the highly
significant influence of the technique of combining drama and music, as used
by the author of Das Rheingold, begins and ends in Legenda.’52 If this is so, the
metaphorical meaning behind the drama of Poland’s beginning, freed from German
invasion, can also be applied to the art of Wyspiański. As the playwright explained
in a letter to the reviewer Maria Krzymuska, he wished to purify his language from
foreign-derived words, ‘bad and ugly, yet failed to avoid them.’53 Then, turning
his attention to the contribution of Germans and Italians in the construction of the
castle and palace complex, he somewhat acrimoniously conceived of the idea of
changing the very location of Kraków, along with Wawel Castle, proposing a new
setting, in Polish style, at the foot of the mountains.54
Naturally, this proposal could not be serious, not least because in Wyspiański’s
view any new Polish capital should not be placed far from the Vistula, the axis
of the world created in Legenda and in many other works. But the artist could
not free himself from his obsession.55 Almost all his works – his graphic and

50
‘Można dopatrywać się odpowiednika Wagnerowskiego stabreimu.’ Stanisław
Wyspiański, Listy zebrane [Collected letters], vol. 1, Part 2, Listy Stanisława Wyspiańskiego
do Józefa Mehoffera, Henryka Opieńskiego i Tadeusza Stryjeńskiego [Letters of Stanisław
Wyspiański to Józef Mehoffer, Henryk Opieński and Tadeusz Stryjeński], ed. M. Rydlowa
(Kraków, 1994), p. 211.
51
‘Tęgi, stary, nieco tylko wygładzony w obrazowaniu.’ Ibid.
52
‘Wyraźny wpływ techniki muzyczno-dramatycznej twórcy Złota Renu zaczyna się
i kończy na Legendzie.’ Mączewski, ‘Wyspiański a Wagner’, p. 217.
53
‘Złych, obcych, jakich jednakże nie zdołał uniknąć.’ S. Wyspiański, letter to M.
Krzymuska of 24 August 1898, quoted in Legenda, Dzieła zebrane, vol. 1, p. 359.
54
Julian Nowak, ‘Wspomnienia o Wyspiańskim’, in Płoszewski, Wyspiański w
oczach współczesnych, vol. 2, p. 171. The art historian Jarosław Krawczyk commented
on this statement made in support of his plan of The Acropolis as ‘his unique attempt
to “polonize” Wawel, to recover it to “genuinely Polish architecture”’ [‘swoistej próby
“spolszczenia” Wawelu, jego rewindykacji na rzecz architektury “prawdziwie polskiej”’].
Jarosław Krawczyk, ‘Mesjanistyczna architektura parlante Stanisława Wyspiańskiego’
[The messianic architecture parlante of Stanisław Wyspiański], Ikonoteka 2 (1990), pp.
41–2.
55
In ‘U źródeł wizyj wawelskich Wyspiańskiego’ [The origin of Wyspiański’s visions
about Wawel], Jerzy Dobrzycki used the expression ‘obsession with Wawel’ in Kronika
Miasta Krakowa (1959–60), p. 95.
 ‘Where the King Spirit becomes manifest’ 151

stage designs, paintings, stained-glass windows, rhapsodies, poems, the dramas

Legenda, Bolesław Śmiały, Skałka [The Little Rock], and Akropolis (both the
drama of that name, and Wyspiański’s architectural design for the reconstruction
of the castle) – can be referred to as ‘Wawel’ works. At the same time, they reflect
the Vistula and are musical by nature. Even among the stained-glass windows
commonly referred to as ‘the Wawel windows’, designed for Wawel Cathedral
and portraying the galaxy of Król Duch (the historical Polish kings and the
Bishop-Saint Stanisław), there was one frame where the legendary Wanda was
to be found. The Wagnerian trend, clearly revealed in Legenda, though perhaps
not so apparent in subsequent works, was still strong and deeply ingrained. The
trend was substantiated in Wyspiański’s design for a new Wawel analogous, to
a large extent, to the one in Bayreuth, conceived with a courage bordering on
impudence worthy of Nietzsche.
Wyspiański’s Bolesław Śmiały, a drama published in 1903 to the
accompaniment of music from Lohengrin, describes the history of eleventh-
century Poland, and more specifically the story of King Bolesław II (‘the Bold’)
and the bishop of Kraków, Stanisław of Szczepanów, who, like Thomas Becket,
was murdered for criticizing the king’s conduct. The martyred bishop was
enshrined, and by the middle of the thirteenth century had been proclaimed a
saint; the king, by contrast, was forced to flee the country and shortly afterwards
was found dead. He also became a legendary figure, joining a galaxy of murky
or condemned rulers who, by the middle of the nineteenth century, were ‘heroes’
capable of triggering the Romantic imagination. Słowacki, too, had earlier
devoted Rhapsody V of Król Duch to this king. Wyspiański dared to perpetuate
the work further in his poetic rhapsody, also titled Bolesław Śmiały,56 written in
iambic octaves and published in the years 1900–02. The subsequent drama of
the same name was an ‘extension’ of the poem, ‘extension’ carrying a formal
meaning because the actual plot is preceded by a versed introduction, a sort
of a song, begun with an octave. The connection between Wyspiański’s poem
and drama can also be seen in the identity of the poet who listens to distant
voices, writing them down in the form of a dramatic dialogue. In the poem the
focus is on the king, whereas in the drama the viewpoints are scattered, and
then improved with a stereoscopic approach. Bolesław Śmiały was expanded
and completed in the drama Skałka (1907), devoted to Saint Stanisław. Through
the opposing views of his protagonists, Wyspiański imbues the conflict between
state power on the one hand, and the consciousness of the people on the other,
with tragic power. He even distinguished principal ‘national personae’ [persony

56
This poem was to be completed with a rhapsody devoted to the King’s opponent
Saint Stanisław, but it was never finished. In a similar vein the stained glass depicting
Bolesław the Bold completed the stained glass showing a figure of Saint Stanislav.
152 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

narodowe],57 who embodied opposite visions of national history, and elevated

them to the ‘level of a universal myth’ [do wysokości uniwersalnego mitu].58
The myth as a prototype and an overriding symbol, the artistic crowning
of an endeavour: this was the ultimate goal for those who aspired to represent
the national, common soul. ‘Myth was the expression of a shared view of the
world,’ wrote Stefan Kołaczkowski, scholar of Wyspiański’s oeuvre and author
of a study of Wagnerian dramatic theory and practice. He continued, stating:
‘so as with the Greek drama, [a myth] should also be an expression of the
common view, not that of an individual.’59 Wagner became discouraged by the
failure to balance the mythical narrative of the Nibelungs and ‘the symbolic
interpretation of historic facts’60 whilst working on a drama about Frederick
Barbarossa (Holy Roman Emperor and King of Germany, 1152–90). Wyspiański
did not yield to the demands of scholarly analysis, instead remaining convinced
that a fundamental discrepancy exists between methodologies of historical
analysis and the skills and tools of a dramatist who should express everything
‘irrespective of circumstance’.61 On the contrary, using Nietzsche, especially
Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben [On the advantage and
disadvantage of history for life] (1874), he felt entitled to interpret historical
events in his own manner; he defended this stance in his versed Noty do
Bolesława Śmiałego [Notes to Bolesław the Bold] and the discursive essay
Argumentum do dramtu króla Bolesława i biskupa Stanisława [Argument for
the drama of King Bolesław and Bishop Stanisław], later written in poetic prose.
Wyspiański derided academic knowledge as trite and schematic, and, for the
purposes of learning history, considered it inferior to the inquisitiveness of the
eye, the power of the imagination and artistic talent, and simply ‘art and free
thought’.62
This need to defend one’s conceptions, coupled with a peremptoriness
worthy of Wagner and Nietzsche combined, served two purposes. First, its aim

57
Stanisław Wyspiański, Bolesław Śmiały. Skałka [Bolesław the Bold. The Little
Rock], ed. J. Nowakowski (Wrocław, 1969), p. 176.
58
Jan Nowakowski, Wyspiański. Studia o dramatach Wyspiański [Studies of
Wyspiański’s dramas] (Kraków, 1972), p. 142.
59
‘Mit był wyrazem wspólnego poglądu na świat, więc też, jak np. w tragedii greckiej,
dramat musiał być wyrazem ogółu, nie jednostki.’ Stefan Kołaczkowski, Ryszard Wagner
jako twórca i teoretyk dramatu [Richard Wagner as a creator and theoretician of drama]
(Warsaw, 1931), p. 28. See also Stefan Kołaczkowski, Wyspiański. Kasprowicz. Przeglądy
[Wyspiański. Kasprowicz. Reviews] (Warsaw, 1968). In spite of sporadic attempts made in
both works regarding the similarities and differences between the action and the concepts of
both authors, Kołaczkowski unfortunately did not carry out a thorough analysis.
60
‘z symboliczną interpretacją faktów historycznych’. Kołaczkowski, Ryszard
Wagner jako twórca i teoretyk dramatu, p. 37.
61
‘co niezależnie od okoliczności’. Ibid.
62
Wyspiański, Bolesław Śmiały. Skałka, pp. 184–5.
 ‘Where the King Spirit becomes manifest’ 153

was to defend the overall essence of historical events, gleaned through poetic
insight, against the incidental features of those same events. Second, it aimed to
free the artist from dead (or deadening) history with the help of life-sustaining
myth, thus liberating the nation from the burden of its past. It might seem
that such an individualistic and voluntary approach to history should lead to
total subjectification. However, though in 1903 he was more likely to support
King Bolesław, Wyspiański in fact fashioned his works in such a way that they
could reveal laws independent of an individual. This is why Bolesław Śmiały’s
‘partner’ work Skałka is, as one of his friends wrote, ‘distinct in character and
structure, and is in a way the “other” side of Bolesław. Regarding stage design,
the two dramas almost make up a single performance’63 designed to appear
simultaneously on two ‘stages, i.e. strictly to comply with the actual setting.’64
Skałka represents the place of the bishop’s martyrdom, situated close to Wawel
Castle, where the plot unfolds.
The objectivity of the tragedy was to be guaranteed – as in many other works
by Wyspiański – by their connection to a real place. In the case of Bolesław
Śmiały the place was obviously Wawel, in particular the slope of Wawel Hill,
where the poet located the Piast dynasty’s royal castle. The second part of the
diptych, Skałka, was set in St Michael’s, the church sanctified by the martyrdom
of the bishop, initially featuring – as the incipient image of the drama – a statue
of St Stanisław over a pool lined with stones. There, according to Wyspiański,
the artist who ‘perceives things differently (unlike those who do not sharpen
their eyesight)’65 can see the source of the tragedy. It is there, as if following
the guidelines of Nietzsche inscribed in ‘Richard Wagner in Bayreuth’, that the
artist hears the ‘soul of music’ as it ‘moulds the body’ to become ‘manifest in
movement, action, institution and custom!’66
Indeed, Nietzsche claimed that through other artists, especially visual artists,
Wagner’s music should permeate all shapes and forms and thus force change in
the contemporary world. Wyspiański, however, did not want to represent music in
a visual form, because although he revered Wagner’s music, he did not accept it as
the voice of his own national community. As a visual artist he felt a responsibility
to defy the thesis that painters are foreigners to music and, in Nietzsche’s words,

63
‘Odrębny i charakterem, i budową, jest niejako drugą stroną Bolesława. Scenicznie
oba utwory są niemal jednym widowiskiem.’ Stanisław Lack, Studia o St. Wyspiańskim
[Study of St. Wyspiański], ed. S. Pazurkiewicz (Częstochowa, 1924), pp. 254–5. See also
Nowakowski, introduction to Wyspiański, Bolesław Śmiały. Skałka, p. lvii.
64
‘Na dwóch scenach, to znaczy ściśle według terenu rzeczywistego.’ Lack, Studia o
St. Wyspiańskim, pp. 254–5.
65
‘Patrzący się inaczej (inaczej niż wy, co nie kształcicie wzroku)’. Wyspiański,
Bolesław Śmiały. Skałka, p. 183.
66
‘die Seele der Musik sich jetzt einen Leib gestalten will, daß sie durch euch alle
hindurch zur Sichtbarkeit in Bewegung, Tat, Einrichtung und Sitte ihren Weg sucht!’
Nietzsche, ‘Richard Wagner in Bayreuth,’ in Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen, part 5.
154 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

to ‘gymnastics, [music’s sister art] in the Hegelian and Wagnerian meaning of

the word.’ Nietzsche continues, maintaining that ‘visual artists are condemned
to hopelessness so long as they continue, as now, in attempting to dispense with
music as the guide to a new visual world.’67 He claimed that when looking to the
figures of the past we should know that they ‘serve history, not life’, whereas
Wyspiański intended to go back to them as to the mythical origins of communal
life, and search there for primeval Polish music.
Wyspiański left sketches of the stage design and costumes (even in the form
of the so-called ‘Bolesław dolls’) for the diptych Bolesław Śmiały–Skałka, and
they demonstrate that much emphasis was put on the plays’ visual element.
Yet, as is the case with Wyspiański’s other dramas, aspects of musical design
are also inherent in their conception. The introductory poem, ‘Prelude’, calls
for instrumental accompaniment, preferably on a hurdy-gurdy, appropriate to
wandering singers, prophets and beggars. Wyspiański imagined a protagonist,
appearing in both parts, bearing this instrument – a ‘rhapsody’ (in the classical
Greek sense that the word can indicate both an epic song and its performer). The
prelude to Bolesław Śmiały–Skałka was initially to have such a character, though
the author eventually abandoned the idea. From preliminary scenes enveloped
in a foggy atmosphere, he went on to sustain two dreams: the vision of a royal
court fashioned in wood, and a throne room materializing on a stage. These
places are reached via the echoing sound of waves emanating from the Vistula,
flowing beneath the castle, providing an ostinato background and amplifying the
silence reigning there.
By choosing appropriate words that compel the audience to focus attentively
on the image, the poet created an aura of mystery and apprehension. Against the
silence evoked by the ‘Prelude’, an affectionate conversation between the king and
a pagan priestess can finally be heard, interrupted from time to time by the faraway
sound of a horn, muffled by the walls; the horn call gradually becomes closer and
‘bigger’, amplified by the wind. This motif is taken up by King Bolesław in his
opening words of the drama. Thus, the prelude, so dynamically diverse, resembles
a ‘Vorspiel’, and the sound of the horn, which appears several times in both
dramas, is akin to a leitmotif. Yet Wyspiański’s instrument, unlike Wagner’s, ‘does
not restore the lost balance of nature’ [przywraca utraconej harmonii natury],68 but
instead foretells tragedy.
Treating power as absolute, King Bolesław does not hesitate to murder the
bishop, who commands him to obey God’s laws. The bishop thus usurps divine
authority and condemns the king. The double perspective does not make the
conflict less tragic; on the contrary, it exacerbates the tragedy. The clash of two
conflicting prehistoric or perennial elements (in the Nietzschean sense) is an

67
‘die Gymnastik im griechischen und Wagnerschen Sinne dieses Wortes. […]
Bildenden Künstler zur Hoffnungslosigkeit verurteilt sind, solange sie eben, wie jetzt
immer noch, der Musik als Führerin in eine neue Schauwelt entraten wollen.’ Ibid.
68
Kozłowski, ‘Podwodna Walhalla’, p 185.
 ‘Where the King Spirit becomes manifest’ 155

historic imperative. This clash, though acute, should be seen as a natural element
in the cyclic transformations of the world; in such a clash some sense of hope
can be found. In Skałka, the more the drama draws to a close, the more apparent
becomes the role played by the Vistula as a driving force. In the last scene of
Act II, in which a world of former beliefs recognizes the spiritual superiority of
the bishop, the pagan grove collapses and a ‘vista at the river’ [szeroki widok
na Wisłę] unfolds. The drama ends with a song of water nymphs extolling the
circular nature of history. Its opening words – ‘the king rises from above the
water gulf’ [Król się rodzi z wód topieli]69 – reappear like a refrain. Yet the
water now has the power of baptism. Wyspiański thus takes a route parallel
to that which links Das Rheingold to Parsifal: eventually he orbits closer to
Wagner than to Nietzsche. When the bells of Kraków begin to chime at Easter in
Akropolis, their sound travels ‘from the side of the Vistula’ [od strony Wisły],70
and the first chime is a harbinger of spring, mingling with ‘the depth of the
Vistula’ [wiślaną tonią].71
In Akropolis, a most mysterious and unusual drama set on the night of the
Resurrection, Wyspiański brings to life the angels carved on Saint Stanisław’s
coffin, also depicted in a mural of the Passion, along with cupids, allegorical
and historical figures rising from their graves, heroes from the Trojan War, Old
Testament figures from the famous Wawel tapestries, the figure of King David
atop the cathedral’s baroque organ, and, finally, Christ and Apollo. In the last verse
of Akropolis, fulfilling the function of both stage direction and transformation of
the musical work, the bells are joined by a full orchestra. Tadeusz Makowiecki
refers to the latter in his essay ‘O muzyce w tworczości Wyspiańskiego’ [On music
in the oeuvre of Wyspiański], writing that ‘it is hard to imagine a fuller, more
Wagnerian or Berlioz-like accumulation of instruments, and all “fortissimo”, in the
triumphant deafening finale.’72 Wyspiański called the whole work a chant to ‘The
Living Word’, and the ‘Wawel song’;73 in this work he referred to independence
as an already accomplished act, even though Poland did not achieve that status for
another 14 years, something that he himself did not live to see.
The design of the Wawel complex after the model of the Acropolis, as
conceived by Wyspiański with the architect Władysław Ekielski, was further proof
that Wyspiański considered independence a reality constituted in a spiritual realm.
The freedom associated with independence was first to be restored in art, and

69
Wyspiański, Bolesław Śmiały. Skałka, p. 169.
70
Stanisław Wyspiański, Akropolis, ed. Ewa Miodońska-Brookes (Wrocław, 1985),
p. 98.
71
Ibid., p. 99.
72
‘Trudno o pełniejsze, bardziej wagnerowskie czy berliozowskie nagromadzenie
instrumentów i wszystkich “fortissimo”, w potężnym ogłuszającym tryumfalnym finale.’
Tadeusz Makowiecki, Muzyka w twórczości Wyspiańskiego [Music in the oeuvre of
Wyspiański] (Warsaw, 1955), p. 84.
73
Ibid., p. 218.
156 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

only then in the real world. The boldness of the artist’s design for Wawel, which
actually required reconstruction and restoration under the vigilant eye of a restorer,
rather than remodelling dictated by the principles of mythmaking,74 was a radical
reflection of this freedom. History was thus, in the Nietzschean way, freed from
the past, and, as a ‘monumental history’, elevated to the level of myth.75 On the top
of Wawel Hill, as Wyspiański’s co-designer Władysław Ekielski later admitted, ‘in
the area of Plac Zwycięstwa [Freedom Square]’,76 with the statue of Nike placed
in the centre, ‘many buildings were to be erected, whose designs were created in
the artist’s imagination.’77 Among them were: the Wawel churches of St Michael
and St George, one of them similar to Sainte Chapelle in Paris; the seats of both
chambers of the Polish Parliament, with royal apartments in between; the National
Museum, constructed from the former Austrian military barracks; the new edifice
of the Academy of Arts, which Wyspiański called ‘a Capitol, Valhalla’ [nazywa
Kapitolem, Walhallą];78 a gymnasium; and a Greek theatre ‘with a magnificent
view of the surroundings, including the Tatra Mountains and Babia Góra […],
the source of the Vistula River, with 700 seats carved out in the rock.’79 The role
that both Wyspiański and Wagner intended for works of art was the establishment
of a new harmony that could also extend to a social level. The act of erecting the
buildings described above was grounded on the premise of transforming society
thoroughly, starting from its spiritual foundations, that is, from its mythology.
The idea of Gesamtkunstwerk, as interpreted by Borchmeyer and after him by
Krzysztof Kozłowski, had a subversive undertone, and it ‘appealed to the need
to transform existing society’ [odnosiła się do potrzeby przebudowy aktualnie
istniejącego społeczeństwa] after the example of the Greek polis.80 This indicates
very well how astute a follower of Wagner Wyspiański was:

74
Katarzyna Nowakowska-Sito, Między Wawelem a Akropolem. Antyk i mit w sztuce
polskiej przełomu XIX i XX wieku [Between Wawel and the Acropolis. Ancient art and myth
in Polish art at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries] (Warsaw, 1996), p. 176.
75
Ibid., p. 177.
76
Władysław Ekielski, Akropolis. Pomysł zabudowania Wawelu. Obmyślili
Stanisław Wyspiański i Władysław Ekielski w latach 1904–1907 [The Acropolis. The idea
of reconstructing Wawel. Conceived by Stanisław Wyspiański and Władysław Ekielski
in 1904–1907], in Wyspiański, Dzieła zebrane, vol. 14, Pisma prozą. Juwenilia [Prose
writings. Juvenilia].
77
‘Miał się wznieść cały szereg budynków, których plany powstały we wspaniałej
wyobraźni artysty.’ Jan Dürr, Amfiteatr Wyspiańskiego pod Wawelem [Wyspiański
amphitheatre at the foot of Wawel], in Wyspiańskiemu – teatr krakowski [To Wyspiański
from the Kraków theatre] (Kraków, 1932), p. 60.
78
Ekielski, Akropolis, p. 197.
79
‘Z czarującym widokiem na okolicę, Tatry i Babią Górę […], skąd wypływa Wisła,
z 700 siedzeniami, wykutymi w skale.’ Ibid., p. 198.
80
Dieter Borchmeyer, Das Theatre Richard Wagners. Idee – Dichtung – Wirkung
(Stuttgart, 1982), p. 72ff.; quoted in Kozłowski, ‘Podwodna Walhalla’, pp. 179–80.
 ‘Where the King Spirit becomes manifest’ 157

[Wagnerian] theatre of the future should be, just as the ancient Greek theatre
was, the most outstanding exponent of a nation’s civilization, its religious
beliefs, morality and aesthetic sense. It should encompass in a synthetic unity
all the fine arts: poetry, music, mimicry, painting, sculpture and architecture.81

The Greek ideals revived and reinstated by Wagner, and which inspired his work
on the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, are perceptible in the shape of the sanctuary of
Melpomene and the nearby Temple of Sport, as well as in later additions to the
Acropolis. Wagner’s designs also reflect the institution and values of the Athenian
Agora, the main purpose of which was to commemorate the heroic traditions of
Athens and render them relevant to the prevailing politics of the day. Similarly,
Wyspiański’s plan to ‘acropolize’ Wawel, as Katarzyna Nowakowska-Sito puts
it, implied the ‘Hellenization of Polish culture.’82 However, Hellenization in
Wyspiański’s conception – analogous with Wagner’s Bayreuth or Leo von Klenze’s
Valhalla Memorial at Regensburg – was the final destination of a people guided
throughout a long journey by their heroes,83 a people apparently led from primitive
Bacchism to Apollonian composure, and through many other stages along the
way.84 Topped with a column dedicated to the victorious goddess Nike, the plan of
the Wawel Acropolis is based on what is elemental, pre-human. Ekielski recalls:

An ancient Gateway of the Thief, located in a place shrouded in legend, near to

THE DRAGON’S DEN
is a starting point to all other places: opposite it, by the Vistula river, is situated
drawn from fantasy
THE CASTLE OF THE BOLESŁAW DYNASTY
with the sarcophagus of
BOLESŁAW THE BOLD.
[Starożytna Baszta Złodziejska, leżąca na legendą owianym miejscu, opodal
SMOCZEJ JAMY
stanowi jakby punkt wyjścia dla całości: naprzeciw niej nad Wisłą leży z
fantazji wysnuty
GRÓD BOLESŁAWÓW
z sarkofagiem
BOLESŁAWA ŚMIAŁEGO].85

81
‘Teatr przyszłości powinien być, podobnie ja teatr w starożytnej Grecji,
najdoskonalszym wykładnikiem cywilizacji narodu, jego wierzeń religijnych, moralności i
poczucia estetycznego. Ma on łączyć w syntetycznej jedni wszystkie sztuki piękne: poezję,
muzykę, mimikę, malarstwo, rzeźbę i architekturę.’ Mączewski, ‘Wyspiański a Wagner’
Part 4, Myśl Narodowa 44 (1929), p. 262.
82
Nowakowska-Sito, Między Wawelem a Akropolem, p. 175.
83
Błoński, ‘Walhalla Wawel,’ in Wyspiański wielokrotnie, pp. 158–9.
84
Ibid.
85
Ekielski, Akropolis, pp. 194–5.
158 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

Like Orestes, Bolesław is close to being redeemed from anathema, reconciled

with St Stanisław, and forgiven the guilt laid on him by ‘Apollo Soter’ [Apollo
the Saviour].86 In this way a path reaches its destination – a path leading from one
Valhalla to the other, from the depths of the Vistula to a Wawel enveloped in sun,
both an Athens and a Jerusalem.
Thus the vision of King Krak from Legenda is fulfilled. Moreover, the vision of
Wyspiański is fulfilled; it becomes real, no longer dwelling in the theatre-illusory
dimension. The Wawel Acropolis is a realization of architecture parlante,87 the
crowning achievement of Wyspiański’s work. The artist gains full power; he
himself becomes Słowacki’s Król Duch. Though the three-dimensional design of
the Acropolis was never realized, Wyspiański attained quasi-royal status when
the majestic Zygmunt Bell from the cathedral spire of Wawel tolled, announcing
his death. Wyspiański profoundly internalized Wagnerian motives and principles,
and used them to build his own vision of how to transform the world. Moreover,
having perceived the formative role of Wagner’s art, and not simply its substantive
nature as an element of composite and syncretic work, he constructed from its
values one of the most daring artistic concepts of the early twentieth century.

86
Nowakowska-Sito, Między Wawelem a Akropolem, p. 175.
87
See Krawczyk, ‘Mesjanistyczna architektura parlante Stanisława Wyspiańskiego’,
pp. 41–2.
 Chapter 8
The Reception of Wagner’s Music and
Ideas in Poland during the Communist Years
(1945–1989)
Magdalena Dziadek

The history of Wagner reception in the Polish lands,1 which began in the 1860s,
has been of a quite particular character, typical of a geographical area that at the
time played a peripheral role in relation to both the West and the East of Europe. It
was deemed sufficient for Polish critics and musicians to become acquainted with
Wagner’s writings and with the characteristic aspects of European Wagnerism,
setting Wagner’s actual music to one side. This was determined by the poor
condition of the operatic theatres in the Polish lands, their main orientation
towards Italian and French repertoire, and the difficult economic situation of
potential consumers of music (the educated social strata), which prevented them
from visiting Bayreuth and attending Wagner premieres held in other European
countries. This chapter provides a survey of the traditions of Wagnerism in
Poland during the second half of the nineteenth century and around the turn of the
twentieth century.
Up to 1900, readers of Wagner’s original literary works were rare in Poland. One
of the first Poles to tackle Wagner’s writings was Stanisław Moniuszko. Although
after reading Wagner’s Oper und Drama Moniuszko called the German composer
‘the saviour of our dramatic music’, he accepted only his theoretical proposals.2 In
Moniuszko’s opinion, Wagner as a composer was devoid of talent. In a letter from
Moniuszko to the well-known Polish critic Józef Sikorski we read that ‘unfortunately
this man is devoid of talent to such an extent, that he cannot support his principles in
practice simply and clearly.’3 Such a view was highly characteristic of Moniuszko and
his contemporaries in Poland, and speaks of a general tendency for conservativism.
The cult of classicism that dominated Poland during Moniuszko’s time, coupled

1
Following the liquidation of the Polish state at the end of the eighteenth century,
these lands were administered by three partitioning powers: Russia, Austria and Prussia.
2
Letter of 25 June 1853. See Stanisław Moniuszko, Listy zebrane [Collected letters],
ed. Witold Rudziński and Magdalena Stokowska (Kraków, 1967), p. 191.
3
‘Na nieszczęście ten człowiek, co tak jasno sam widzi sam pozbawion twórczego
talentu do tyla, aby przykładem w praktyce mógł równie prosto i jasno poprzeć teorii swojej
zasady.’ Ibid.
160 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

with a common conception regarding the form and purpose of national music,
shaped this negative attitude toward any form of modernism. It is worth reflecting
that such negative views on the modernism of Wagner and Liszt were not limited to
Poland, and traces of similar prejudices can be detected among the young Russian
‘nationalist school’ of the 1860s. In 1868 Mily Balakirev informed Anton Rubinstein
that he had heard Lohengrin for the first, and last, time, and that it was more trivial,
and less spiritual, than anything he had ever heard.4
The first Polish articles about Wagner appeared at the beginning of the 1860s
in the professional Warsaw periodical Ruch muzyczny [Musical movement],
edited by Sikorski.5 Such second-hand reading material, as well as personal
reflections on Wagner and his theatre, were provided by the few Poles who
frequented Bayreuth (such as Leon Piniński of L’viv, author of the first Polish
brochures on Wagner, written from a conservative standpoint),6 followed
by German and French authors translated into Polish.7 Nineteenth-century
Polish writings on Wagner displayed no attempts at engaging with Russian
or Bohemian Wagnerism, in line with the general tendency in the nineteenth
century for Poland to isolate itself from other Central European cultures. This
tendency (especially in Warsaw, which was occupied by Russians) was aimed
at demonstrating resistance to Russian culture as ‘barbaric’, ‘Asiatic’. We can
observe the same tendency in Galicia. Both centres also showed an aversion
towards Czech national culture, fuelled by the political interests of the Polish
aristocracy in Austria. More open to Slavonic cultures was Poznań (belonging to
Prussia), since its intelligentsia were influenced by scholars from the Faculty of
Slavonic Literature at the University of Breslau where the ‘Slavonic idea’ was
consequently cultivated. Closer contacts between Polish and Slavonic culture

4
M. A. Balakirev, Perepiska s N. S. Rubinshteinem i s M. P. Byelayevem, ed. V.
Kiselev (Moscow, 1956), p. 19 (letter of 2 November 1868). Some of these earlier attitudes
toward Wagner are explored further in Chapter 2.
5
Among them was an anonymous paper ‘Wagner w Paryżu i w Europie’ [Wagner
in Paris and in Europe], Ruch muzyczny 15 (1861), pp. 231–6, whose author examined
Wagner’s conception of ‘music of the future’ from the very characteristic perspective of the
so-called ‘Slavonic idea’, suggesting that Wagner’s ideas are eminently suitable for Slavs
and can serve the building of the future of Slav music.
6
Leon Piniński, O operze nowoczesnej i znaczeniu Ryszarda Wagnera oraz o
Parsifalu Ryszarda Wagnera [About modern opera and Richard Wagner’s importance, and
about Wagner’s Parsifal] (L’viv, 1883).
7
The latter did not, however, include Baudelaire or authors from the circle of the
Revue wagnérienne; the main supplier of knowledge on Wagner in the French language was
the journalist Catulle Mendès, residing in Poland at that time; also widely read was Schuré’s
Le drame musicale Richard Wagner, son oeuvre et son idée (1900). The Polish translation,
titled Ryszard Wagner i jego dramat muzyczny [Richard Wagner and his musical drama],
prepared by Emilia Węsławska and provided with an epilogue by Władysław Jabłonowski,
appeared in Warsaw in 1908. Of course, the reception of both these authors concerns the
last decades of the nineteenth century.
 The Reception of Wagner’s Music and Ideas in Poland 161

began only after the year 1900. They were primarily the result of democratic
transformation in Russia and Austria.8
Around the turn of the twentieth century, the first Polish premieres of Wagner
operas took place in L’viv and Warsaw. Besides Lohengrin and Tannhäuser – works
already being treated as part of the core European repertoire – there were productions
of the Der Ring (the whole cycle in L’viv, in 1914; Die Walküre alone in Warsaw,
in 1904) and Parsifal (in a staged version at the Warsaw Philharmonic in 1908).
These productions did not have much staying power on account of shortcomings
in musical execution and staging, but they did give rise – especially the Warsaw
productions – to substantial interest on the part of critics, who fell into a belated
Polish ‘Wagner mania’. This coincided with the peak phase in the influence of the
Młoda Polska [Young Poland] literary movement,9 and more specifically with its
‘neo-Romantic’ strand. Within literary neo-Romanticism and the accompanying
critical writings, there developed a ‘cult of the three bards’, namely the great
Romantic poets Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki and Zygmunt Krasiński.
Their work was seen through the prism of the ‘deed’, especially by writers of
neo-Romantic orientation such as Artur Górski, Cezary Jellenta and Władysław
Jabłonowski, and they were ascribed the quality of ‘Promethean activism’ – a term
used by Młoda Polska writers to denote self-sacrificing work for the betterment
and emancipation of society. The messianic idea contained in the writings of the
Polish Romantics was also rediscovered. The most spectacular example of this
was Artur Górski’s monograph on Adam Mickiewicz entitled Monsalwat, which
shows the life of Mickiewicz as an offering to his nation. The first words of the
book, ‘Monsalvat was his aim’, refer clearly to the Wagnerian myth.10
One important point of reference for authors of the ‘cult of the three bards’,
which made it possible to bring the concept of the Romantic poets up to date and
present them as timeless, was the figure of Wagner. He too was decked out in the
garb of a ‘bard’, under the sway of Nietzsche’s early writings (above all the essay

8
See Magdalena Dziadek, ‘Kontakty Polaków ze słowiańskimi kulturami muzycznymi
w latach 1905–1914’ [The contacts of the Polish people with Slavonic musical cultures in
the years 1905–1914], in Elżbieta Wojnowska, Ludwik Bielawski, and Katarzyna Dadak-
Kozicka (eds), Europejski repertuar muzyczny na ziemiach Polski [European musical
repertoire in the Polish area] (Warsaw, 2003), pp. 113–22; Magdalena Dziadek, ‘Warszawa
– Petersburg: Kontakty muzyczne dwóch stolic na przełomie XIX i XX wieku’ [Warsaw –
Petersburg: The musical contacts of the two capitals at the end of the nineteenth century]
Muzyka 3 (2009), pp. 181–204.
9
The Młoda Polska period of Polish literature, visual arts and music covered
approximately the years between 1890 and 1918. It was the result of strong aesthetic and
ideological opposition to the previous ‘Positivist’ period, and at the same time a part of
West European Modernism. Young Poland promoted such trends as Decadence, neo-
Romanticism, Symbolism, Impressionism and Art Nouveau. See also Chapter 7 for a
discussion of the Young Poland movement.
10
See Artur Górski, Monsalwat. Rzecz o Adamie Mickiewiczu [Monsalvat. About
Adam Mickiewicz] (Warsaw, 1998), p. 15.
162 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

‘Richard Wagner in Bayreuth’)11 and the above-mentioned monograph by Eduard

Schuré, interpreted as a way into the Promethean image of Wagner, on account of
the keywords that recurred in it: ‘understanding’, ‘love’ and ‘compassion’.12 In
Polish neo-Romantic literature, Wagner became the implementer of a lofty social
mission – a mission of redemption. This approach is splendidly characterised by
the following extract from a profile of Wagner produced by the Warsaw publicist
Walery Gostomski: ‘For the bold champion of art, the Wagnerian artistic ideal
equates to a humanitarian ideal, and then to the religious ideal of humanity.’13
An interest in the Wagnerian idea was displayed by many Młoda Polska
playwrights, which resulted in rich literary recastings of plotlines from Wagner’s
dramas in which the original settings of Wagner’s works were replaced by
images taken from Slavonic mythology. Well-known examples of this include
Stanisław Wyspiański’s poem ‘Legenda’ [The legend] (1897); Lucjan Rydel’s
dramatic fairy-tale ‘Zaczarowane koło’ [Magic circle] (1900); the poems ‘Pan
Twardowski’ and ‘Madejowe łoże’ [The Iron Maiden] by the same author; and
Antoni Lange’s drama Wenedzi [Wenden] (1909). There were also plans to
build theatres modelled on Bayreuth (in particular, Wyspiański’s design for a
theatre on the slopes of Wawel Hill in Kraków,14 and Tadeusz Miciński’s idea for
building a ‘mystic’ theatre in the Tatra Mountains).15
It is no exaggeration to state that Polish Wagnerism developed firstly as a
literary and only later as a musical phenomenon. At a considerable distance from

11
Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘Richard Wagner in Bayreuth’, in Karl Schlechta (ed.),
Friedrich Nietzsche: Werke in drei Bänden [Friedrich Nietzsche: Works, in three volumes],
vol. 1, Unzeitgemaße Betrachtungen [Untimely meditations] (Munich, 1954), p. 376.
Nietzsche’s essay was widely read in Poland in the 1890s, either in its original version
or in a French translation by Maria Baumgartner. The Polish translation by Maria Cumft-
Pieńkowska appeared in Warsaw in 1901.
12
This work was first published in Poland in 1908 in a translation by Emilia
Węsławska, as Ryszard Wagner i jego dramat muzyczny (see above, n. 7).
13
‘Wagnerowski ideał artystyczny jest równoznaczny dla śmiałego bojownika sztuki
z ideałem humanitarnym, a następnie z religijnym ideałem ludzkości.’ Walery Gostomski,
‘Tragedia artysty’ [The artist’s tragedy], Biblioteka Warszawska 3 (1904), p. 289. Among
the comprehensive surveys of the Polish Wagnerian literature from the Młoda Polska period
is my own article ‘Polish Reception of Wagner’s Music and Ideas’, in Maja Trochimczyk
(ed.), A Romantic Century in Polish Music (Los Angeles, 2009), pp. 123–49.
14
On Wawel Hill stands the Royal Castle. See Chapter 7 for more on Wyspiański’s
ambitions.
15
The Tatras were the object of fascination for Młoda Polska artists. Historians of
Polish culture speak about the discovery of the Tatra Mountains by the Młoda Polska artists
as a phenomenon that had an important impact upon Polish national culture at the end of
the nineteenth century. See Franciszek Ziejka ‘W stronę Tatr i Podhala’ [Towards Tatra
and Podhale], in Poeci, misjonarze, uczeni. Z dziejów kultury i literatury polskiej [Poets,
missionaries, scholars: From the history of the Polish culture and literature] (Kraków,
1998), pp. 169–88.
 The Reception of Wagner’s Music and Ideas in Poland 163

the work on interpreting Wagner’s ideas in Poland stood the assimilation of his
music, his poetry and the artistic conceptions that accompanied them. This second
aspect was examined by the first Polish musicologists. One declared enthusiast
of Wagner as a musician and a poet was the Kraków musicologist Zdzisław
Jachimecki, trained in Austria. His monograph of 1911 remains one of the seminal
Polish works on Wagner.16 Jachimecki based it on German literature, also quoting
abundantly from the writings of Wagner himself, including from the texts of his
music dramas themselves.

Polish Wagnerism during the Inter-War Years

The inter-war period 1918–39 marks a regression in the development of Polish

Wagnerism. Although opera companies in Warsaw, L’viv and Poznań did give
several performances of Lohengrin, Tannhäuser and Der fliegende Holländer,
single works from Der Ring, and even Tristan und Isolde (staged by the Warsaw
Opera in 1921) and Parsifal (Warsaw Opera, 1927),17 they did not arouse any great
interest, as they were conventional in their staging and direction, and performed
by singers who were not Wagner specialists. The number of Wagner premieres in
Poland systematically declined from the mid 1930s, due – as one Poznań critic
states – to potential producers recognising increasingly clearly the gap between the
standard of Wagner productions in Poland and in the rest of Europe (‘the demands
rose with regard to standards’ [wymagania co do poziomu wzrosły], explained
the critic in question quite bluntly).18 The Poznań production of Lohengrin in
1936, to which the above comment refers, was not the last in pre-war Poland.
In 1937, Der fliegende Holländer was premiered in the same city (at that time,
Poznań had the most prosperous opera company in Poland, under the direction
of Zygmunt Latoszewski), directed by the stage manager of the Hamburg Opera,
the ‘Polophile’ Heinrich Strohm (responsible for premieres of Moniuszko’s Halka
and Szymanowski’s Harnasie in Germany). This premiere was one of a number
of Polish–German artistic ventures initiated from 1934 in diplomatic spheres,
overseen by the envoy of the Third Reich in Warsaw, Hans Adolf von Moltke,19
and the Polish envoy in Berlin, Józef Lipski.20 Press articles written in connection

16
Zdzisław Jachimecki, Wagner (Kraków, 1911).
17
A full list of the Wagner premieres given during the inter-war years in Warsaw is
provided by the theatre historian Józef Grubowski in ‘Wagner w Warszawie’ [Wagner in
Warsaw], Ruch muzyczny 10 (1963), pp. 13–15.
18
Zygmunt Sitowski, ‘Z opery. Lohengrin’ [From the opera. Lohengrin], Kurier
poznański 546 (1936), p. 10.
19
Moltke attended the above-mentioned premiere of Der fliegende Holländer.
20
More information on this subject can be found in Magdalena Dziadek, Opera
poznańska w latach 1919–2005 [The Poznań Opera 1919–2005] (Poznań, 2007), pp. 117–18.
164 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

with that premiere stressed its apolitical character, as well as the apolitical nature
of music in general as an art form projective of humanistic ideas.
In comparison with the situation during the nineteenth century, in inter-war
Poland a certain balance was evident between musical and literary culture in the
functioning of Wagner reception, though the latter still played an important role
in shaping the ideas of the educated part of society regarding Wagner’s art. An
innovative and prominent trend in literary Wagnerology in the years 1918–39 was
the interpretation of Wagner’s ideas within the context of theatrical thought; interest
lay principally in the reception of the ideas of Adolphe Appia and the architects of
the ‘Grand Theatre Reform’.21 As Polish culture was completely cut off from what
was happening prior to 1926 beyond the eastern border of the Republic of Poland,22
the call for a Grand Theatre Reform was represented mainly by the German and
British reformers Reinhardt, Craig and Piscator, with little attention afforded the
work of Russian producers like Meyerhold. The ‘Wagner question’ appeared in the
writings of a number of inter-war authors, including Wiktor Brumer (who addressed
the issue of the links between the theatre of Wagner and Wyspiański in his 1933
book Teatr Wyspiańskiego [Wyspiański’s theatre];23 Stefan Kołaczkowski (author
of the earnestly conceived work Ryszard Wagner jako twórca i teoretyk dramatu
[Richard Wagner as a drama theorist and writer]);24 Karol Stromenger (in the
modest volume Teatr Ryszarda Wagnera [The theatre of Richard Wagner],25 which
he began by faithfully reiterating Nietzsche’s old views on the cathartic function
of Wagner’s theatre before arriving at a detailed analysis of the Bayreuth master’s
stage conceptions); and Bronisław Horowicz (author of the key work Teatr operowy
[Operatic theatre],26 published in Paris during the 1940s). In the last-mentioned work
we find the first precise recapitulation and comparison of the theatrical conceptions
of Wagner, the Meiningen Ensemble, Appia, Craig and subsequent reformers.27
However, these works had a limited influence on theatre-goers interested in music:
Brumer and Horowicz were theatre men, and Kołaczkowski was a professor of literary
history at the Jagiellonian University of Kraków; only Stromenger – associated from
1934 as a lecturer in opera history at the first Polish state theatre school (the famous

21
For more on Appia, see R.C. Beacham, Adolphe Appia Artist and Visionary of the
Modern Theatre (Chur and Philadelphia, 1994).
22
In 1926, Poland concluded a trade treaty with the USSR, which was the first step
towards the renewal of cultural contacts between the two countries, completely severed
after 1918.
23
Wiktor Brumer, Teatr Wyspiańskiego [Wyspiański’s Theatre] (Warsaw, 1933).
24
Stefan Kołaczkowski, Ryszard Wagner jako twórca i teoretyk dramatu [Richard
Wagner as a drama theorist and writer] (Warsaw, 1931).
25
Karol Stromenger, Teatr Ryszarda Wagnera [The theatre of Richard Wagner]
(Warsaw, 1934).
26
Bronisław Horowicz, Teatr operowy [Operatic theatre] (Paris, 1946).
27
Horowicz’s book was not published in Polish translation until 1963, as the author
refused to include in it laudatory passages on the subject of Socialist Realism.
 The Reception of Wagner’s Music and Ideas in Poland 165

Państwowy Instytut Sztuki Teatralnej [State Institute of Theatrical Arts], commonly

known as PIST) – was popular in musical circles, having worked for many years
as a music reviewer for Warsaw newspapers and periodicals. However, he was a
conservative critic and was not greatly popular (including as a latter-day Wagner
apologist) among young musicians: the generation of composers and critics that had
their debut during the 1930s lived and worked under the pressures of modernity.
Their principal watchword was a break with Romanticism as an outdated movement,
especially in respect to its rampant individualism and exaggerated emotionality, and
its pathos and stiltedness, derived from the adaptation of music to ‘grand themes’.
Of course, this kind of anti-Romantic attitude was not exclusive to Poles.
Nevertheless, historians of Polish music readily locate its source in the actions of
Karol Szymanowski, who in the 1930s broke with the influences of Wagner and
Strauss in his own work and advised his pupils to do the same, urging them to
acquaint themselves with newer French music adhering to the neoclassical trend.28
One way or another, towards the end of the 1930s the conviction that a modern
composer should be, in the words of Karol Stromenger, ‘an artist without missionary
ideas, without any tendencies other than the artistic’,29 and ‘a constructor, a
technician [who] does not build states of mind’30 had become binding. It was this
that ‘buried’ Wagner, who in the eyes of the ‘progressive’ musical faction and the
musical public was on a par with the German late Romantics Brahms, Strauss,
Mahler and Bruckner.

Wagner on the Blacklist (1945–1956)

This conviction remained unaltered during the early post-war years, when many of
the composers and critics whose careers had begun during the five years prior to
the war resumed their musical activities, and concentrated after 1945 on realising
their old plans and aspirations. Among their number was the composer and publicist
Stefan Kisielewski, who graduated from the Warsaw Conservatory in 1937 and
belonged to Szymanowski’s inner circle of friends during the composer’s lifetime,
and to his apologists after Szymanowski’s death in 1937. Kisielewski made his debut

28
In reality, however, the principal teachers of modernity in Polish music were the
Russian composers Prokofiev and Stravinsky; see Magdalena Dziadek, Stefan Kisielewski
jako autor i krytyk muzyki współczesnej [Stefan Kisielewski as an author and critic of
contemporary music], in Andrzej Hejmej, Kama Hawryszków and Katarzyna Cudzich-
Budniak (eds), Dysonanse. Twórczość Stefana Kisielewskiego (1911–1991) [Disonances.
The output of Stefan Kisielewski 1911–2011] (Kraków, 2011), pp. 185–98.
29
‘Artystą bez idei posłanniczych, bez tendencji innych, jak tylko artystyczne.’ Karol
Stromenger, ‘Muzyka. Koncert S. Prokofiewa’ [Music. A Prokofiev concert], Gazeta polska
[The Polish newspaper], 5 May 1930, p. 6.
30
‘Konstruktorem, technikiem, [który] nie buduje stanów duszy.’ Karol Stromenger,
‘Koncerty’ [Concerts], Gazeta polska, 10 April 1934, p. 4.
166 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

in 1945 in the pages of the Kraków weekly Tygodnik powszechny [General weekly],
the resounding voice of the Catholic intelligentsia during the period of the People’s
Republic of Poland – within the limits allowed by the censor, of course.31 As a self-
declared opponent of the doctrine of Socialist Realism that was slowly appearing
on the cultural horizon (though only from a theoretical perspective at that time), he
began his work at the Tygodnik with a much-discussed article in which he defended
elite art. He justified his arguments by reference to the hierarchical structure of
the Communist Party of the USSR, with Stalin at its head and the grey masses of
‘comrades’ at the bottom.32 As a columnist, he was also occupied by other subjects,
such as censorship and the absurdities of life in the People’s Republic of Poland.
Seeking out targets for his scoffing, provocative polemics, in the summer of 1949 he
addressed an extremely thorny issue of the day: the aversion among the authorities
and society at large toward the music of Wagner, conditioned by the position
it occupied in the culture of the Third Reich. Although in the People’s Republic
of Poland there was admittedly no official censorship of Wagner and Strauss (as
attested by the fact that Kisielewski’s articles on the subject were published at all),
the music of these composers was not performed, other than excerpts from the works
of Strauss that occasionally served as musical illustrations in official propaganda
films shown in Polish cinemas under the title ‘Polish Film Chronicle’. The antipathy
towards Wagner and Strauss was a stark symptom of the animosity towards the
Germans, which grew during the Second World War and was manifested after the
war both among official circles, which were strongly inspired by the anti-German
rhetoric of Stalin’s speeches, and by right-wing factions referring to the national
democratic ideology that had been popular before the war.33 Stefan Kisielewski was
distant both from official forms of anti-Germanism and from demonstrations of
national-democratic sympathies. This is doubtless why he could allow himself the
excess of his tirades in defence of Wagner (and Richard Strauss) in 1949,34 which
were the result neither of sheer perversity nor the simple need to fill his column
during the off-season. In Kisielewski’s column from a July 1949 issue of Tygodnik
powszechny, we read the following:

In post-war Poland, a rich musical life is flourishing […]. There is a move

towards popularising the output of art music, and we can hear Beethoven and

31
This publication was not issued during the darkest years of Stalinism (1950–56).
‘People’s Republic of Poland’ was the country’s official designation up to 1989.
32
Stefan Kisielewski, ‘Czy istnieje sztuka dla mas?’ [Does art for the masses exist?],
Tygodnik powszechny 3 (1945), p. 1.
33
During the 1930s, Polish national democracy took on nationalistic traits.
34
Kisielewski wrote a lengthy obituary of Strauss – ‘Ryszard Strauss (1864–1949)’,
published in Tygodnik powszechny 38 (1949), p. 3 – in which he criticised Strauss’s moral
stance (‘the question of Strauss as a moral man is probably complex and unresolved’), but
also sought to absolve him as an artist (‘despite all the man’s offences, his work speaks
above him in a pure and eternal language’).
 The Reception of Wagner’s Music and Ideas in Poland 167

Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky, Chopin and Szymanowski. Only the

operas and symphonic works of two composers are not played: Richard Wagner
and Richard Strauss.35

It is worth drawing attention to the context in which Wagner’s name appears in the
title of the column – ‘Wagner, banned Chopin and a cross’: Wagner is juxtaposed
with Chopin, whose music was forbidden in occupied Poland (Kisielewski
exaggerates, of course, writing that Chopin was played in Germany obsessively
at that time), and with a cross, both (Chopin and the cross) part of Polish national
symbolism. The title also refers to the iconic figure of the Teutonic Knight (in
Polish Krzyżak, very close to the word for cross – krzyż), with whom German
invaders had been associated in Poland for centuries. In explaining the value
of playing Wagner again in Poland, this was the tradition to which Kisielewski
referred, thus explaining the eternal antagonism between Poles and Germans
as something derived from historical necessity – out of the conditions of close
proximity. Hence we encounter the vision of a transition from a ‘bad’ history to a
‘good’ one (from life to art), depicted in such a way so as not to offend the feelings
of readers with the misery of war still in their memories:

One had to get to know the steel tanks of our mighty imperialist neighbour;
one also had to get to know his cultural tanks, his art, his history, his ideas and
conceptions. Burying one’s head in the sand has never saved anyone – ignorance
is not conducive to effective defence […]. I understand that Wagner might not be
played in Germany. But not to play him in Poland! Whoever are we punishing
like that?36

Kisielewski went on to employ an argument that disarmed his ideological

opponents: ‘Wagner and Strauss are played all over the world, including in Soviet
Russia’,37 one of his favourite comparisons, despite the fact that he probably knew
relatively little about musical life in the USSR at that time.

35
‘W Polsce powojennej rozkwita bogate życie muzyczne [...]. Dąży się do
upowszechniania dorobku muzyki artystycznej, gra się Beethovena i Mozarta,
Czajkowskiego i Musorgskiego, Chopina i Szymanowskiego. Nie gra się jedynie oper i
utworów symfonicznych dwóch kompozytorów Ryszarda Wagnera i Ryszarda Straussa.’
Kisiel [Stefan Kisielewski], ‘Łopatą do głowy. Wagner, zakazany Chopin i krzyż’ [A spade
to the head. Wagner, banned Chopin and a cross], Tygodnik powszechny 29 (1949), p. 12.
36
‘Trzeba było poznać stalowe czołgi potężnego imperialistycznego sąsiada, trzeba
było też poznać jego czołgi kulturalne, jego sztukę, jego historię, jego myśli i koncepcje.
Chowaniem w piasek nikt się nigdy nie ocalił – niewiedza nie sprzyja skutecznej obronie
[...]. Rozumiem, że można nie grać Wagnera w Niemczech. Ale nie grać go w Polsce!
Kogoż w ten sposób karzemy.’ Ibid.
37
‘Wagnera i Straussa gra się na całym świecie, z Rosją Sowiecką włącznie.’ Ibid.
168 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

Wagner’s Music Comes out of the Shadows

In 1950, the leading Polish conductor Grzegorz Fitelberg, head of the Grand
Polish Radio Orchestra in Katowice, replied to a question posed in a letter by
his younger colleague Jan Krenz (a pupil of Valerian Berdyaev at the Warsaw
Conservatory during the occupation): ‘We are now free to play Wagner, as you
write, but as yet we should not, especially here in Katowice. The mental trauma
remains – better to wait.’38 Not until the beginning of 1953 did Jan Krenz dare
to take the groundbreaking step of including excerpts of Tristan und Isolde (the
Introduction and ‘Isolde’s Death’) in the programme of one of his symphonic
concerts. Fitelberg reacted enthusiastically at news of this performance, and on
24 February 1953 he presented ‘Venusberg’ from Tannhäuser and several excerpts
from Die Meistersinger in a public concert given by his orchestra in Katowice.
The same concert also featured the first post-war Polish performance of a work
by Richard Strauss – Don Juan. ‘I do Wagner with delight’ [Z rozkoszą robię
Wagnera], commented Fitelberg in another letter to Krenz.39
From the mid 1950s German music, including works that had previously been
dangerously associated with Nazi times, slowly began to return to Polish opera
houses and concert halls. The first year of the post-Stalin thaw (1956) saw a great
revival in all fields of culture; this was an epoch of dynamic growth for Polish culture,
elevating it to a European level, and characterised by a general inclination toward
revisionism and the removal of restrictions. During this year, two Polish opera
houses almost simultaneously staged works by Wagner, though only the ‘safest’,
ideologically neutral works: on 5 February, at the Warsaw Opera (then residing in
the pre-war Roman Catholic House), the premiere of Lohengrin was held, followed
by Der fliegende Holländer on 14 October at the Grand Theatre in Poznań.40 The
latter production had to be put back by several days, as at the beginning of October
public disturbances occurred in Poznań at news of events in Hungary;41 in a show

38
‘Już wolno u nas grać Wagnera – jak Pan pisze, lecz jeszcze nie należy – szczególniej
tu, w Katowicach. Uraz psychiczny trwa – lepiej poczekać.’ Letter from Grzegorz Fitelberg
to Jan Krenz of 22 September 1950, in Leon Markiewicz (ed.), Korespondencja Grzegorza
Fitelberga z lat 1941–1953 [Correspondence of Grzegorz Fitelberg 1941–1953] (Katowice,
2003), p. 234. Katowice is the capital of Upper Silesia, a region that before 1918 belonged
to Prussia. After the Second World War, Polish–German questions were particularly
inflammatory in the region.
39
Ibid., p. 381, 19 February 1953.
40
Details of Wagner premieres in Polish opera houses during the period 1944–89
are published in Małgorzata Komorowska, Kronika teatrów muzycznych PRL lipiec 1944–
czerwiec 1989 [Chronicle of music theatres in the People’s Republic of Poland from July
1944 to June 1989] (Poznań, 2003).
41
From 23 October until 10 November 1956 a spontaneous nation-wide revolt
occurred in Budapest against the government of the People’s Republic of Hungary and its
Soviet-imposed policies.
 The Reception of Wagner’s Music and Ideas in Poland 169

of solidarity with that kindred nation, the citizens of Poznań had turned up in droves
and behaved ostentatiously at performances of the work proposed by the director
of opera Zdzisław Górzyński, namely Der Zigeunerbaron (The Gypsy Baron], an
opera with Hungarian motifs. In his unpublished ‘Notes for a memoir’, Górzyński
wrote the following:

When I set about rehearsals for The Flying Dutchman, there was no way of
foreseeing that its premiere would coincide with the historical days of the Polish
October, that it would even be postponed for several days as a result. Anyone who
is aware what staging a Wagner opera means will understand my comparison –
toutes proportions gardées – the premiere of The Flying Dutchman was also a
groundbreaking moment for the Poznań Opera.42

Ultimately, the premiere of Der fliegende Holländer took place on 14 October 1956,
under the direction of Willy Bodenstein, director of the Dessau Opera (in the German
Democratic Republic), with Górzyński as music director.43 In his ‘Notes’, Górzyński
goes on to explain how Bodenstein came to be invited to Poznań,44 recalling his
own sojourns in the GDR during the early 1950s, where he prepared, among other
works, the premieres of Polish operas, including Tadeusz Szeligowski’s Bunt żaków

42
‘Gdy przystępowałem do prób Holendra tułacza, nie można było przewidzieć,
że jego premiera zbiegnie się z historycznymi dniami Polskiego Października, że nawet
zostanie o kilka dni w związku z nimi przesunięta. Kto się orientuje, czym jest wystawienie
opery Wagnera, zrozumie moje porównanie – tout proportions gardées – premiera Holendra
tułacza była także dla Opery Poznańskiej momentem przełomowym.’ Zdzisław Górzyński,
‘Notatki do życiorysu’ [Notes for a memoir], unpublished typescript in the possession of the
conductor’s family (Warsaw, 1975), p. 195.
43
It is worth mentioning that in December 1955, also under the initiative of Zdzisław
Górzyński, Poznań witnessed the premiere of Weber’s Der Freischütz – a work widely seen
as representative of German national opera.
44
Górzyński wrote in his ‘Notes for a memoir’ ‘Someone might ask how I fell upon
the idea of hiring Bodenstein. Well, at that time I was frequently a guest conductor in the
GDR, and for a while I was a permanent associate conductor with the Staatsoper in Berlin,
directed for many years by my friend, Professor Hans Pischner, nota bene an outstanding
harpsichordist, well known to Polish audiences. In Berlin, I had many opportunities to
meet with Bodenstein and to observe his directorial work. I rated it highly. Bodenstein
was among the few great opera directors who were guided by the score and were able to
serve it.’ [Może ktoś zapytać, jak wpadłem na pomysł zaangażowania Bodensteina. Otóż
w tym czasie często dyrygowałem gościnnie w NRD, a przez pewien czas byłam na stałej
współpracy dyrygenckiej z berlińską Staatsoper, kierowaną przez wiele lat przez mojego
przyjaciela prof. Hansa Pischnera, notabene znakomitego klawesynistę, dobrze znanego
publiczności polskiej. W Berlinie miałem wiele okazji do spotkań z Bodensteinem, do
obserwowania jego pracy reżyserskiej. Wysoko ją ceniłem. Bodenstein należał do tych
nielicznych reżyserów operowych dużego formatu, którzy kierowali się partyturą i potrafili
jej służyć.] Górzyński, ‘Notatki’, p. 106.
170 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

[The student revolt], promoted by the Polish authorities as a calling card of the art
of Socialist Realism. Like most leading Polish artists at that time, Górzyński was a
frequent visitor to the countries of the Eastern Bloc and also to the West; friendships
he made on his foreign travels enabled him to shape the modern image of the Poznań
theatre, which he ran from 1954 to 1962. Part of that work was the premiere of
Der fliegende Holländer. Bodenstein was regarded as an avant-garde director, as is
attested by the reception of his much-publicised Wagner premieres in Dessau.45 In
Poznań, too, Bodenstein adopted an avant-garde approach, which included the use
of light as a means of expression. The critics focussed on interpreting the director’s
intentions (before the premiere, Bodenstein set them out precisely in the press)46 and
assiduously avoided any issues relating to Wagnerian ideology, which may be seen
as the safe option, as this was still a perilous subject.
Reviewers of the first post-war Polish Wagner premiere – the Warsaw
production of Lohengrin – also behaved diplomatically. That production was
directed by Wiktor Brégy (also a singer and teacher), with the then director of
the Warsaw Opera, Valerian Berdyaev (previously associated with Poznań), as
music director. In order to convey Berdyaev’s courage in conducting the first
post-war Wagner spectacle in Poland, a few words about his life are necessary.
A native Russian, Berdyaev settled in Warsaw at the beginning of the 1930s.
In 1932, he took over the conducting class at the State Conservatory of Music
in Warsaw vacated by Grzegorz Fitelberg, who was thrown out by ministerial
officials.47 Berdyaev’s work with the Conservatory coincided with an escalation
of Polish nationalism, especially in Warsaw, and he became (probably without his
own active participation) an ‘icon’ of Aryanism in the musical culture of Warsaw,
serving right-wing publicists as an argument in their anti-Semitic campaign, to
which his Jewish rival, Fitelberg, succumbed. During the occupation of Poland,
Berdyaev became associated with music ensembles working for the Germans, for
which he had the permission of the Polish underground authorities – that is how
he protected his Jewish wife. After 1945, he had great difficulty occupying his due
place in Polish musical life. He worked in Kraków, then in Poznań, and not until

45
As manager of the Dessau Opera Theatre, Bodenstein initiated in 1953 an annual
event ‘Richard-Wagner-Festwochen’ [Richard Wagner festival weeks], which won for the
city the epithet ‘Bayreuth of the North’.
46
See Willy Bodenstein, ‘Przed premierą “Holendra”’ [Before the premiere of The
Dutchman], Głos wielkopolski [Voice of Greater Poland], 244 (1956), p. 3. (Wielkopolska,
Great or Greater Poland, is the historical name of the north-west region of Poland, whose
capital is Poznań.)
47
Also dismissed were Karol Szymanowski, then Vice-Chancellor of the
Conservatory’s Tertiary School, and several of his closest collaborators, including Fitelberg.
The conflict connected with these dismissals triggered one of the most heated disputes in
the Polish music environment of the 1930s. See Magdalena Dziadek, ‘Karol Szymanowski
as Chancellor of the Higher School of Music in Warsaw. New facts, new light’, in Karol
Szymanowski Works – Reception – Contexts, ed. Zofia Helman (Warsaw, 2008), pp. 94–117.
 The Reception of Wagner’s Music and Ideas in Poland 171

the 1954–55 season was he offered the post of head of the Warsaw Opera that he
had long wished for, and at the same time a professorship in conducting at the
State College of Music in the capital. He did not have time enjoy those roles for
long, as he died in 1956.48
Berdyaev was assisted in his cooperation with Berlin before the war by the
composer Piotr Rytel, a professor at the Conservatory and leading Warsaw publicist
representing the national democratic camp (Rytel was Fitelberg’s main opponent
in the above-mentioned press campaign). After the war, Rytel continued to work as
a teacher and publicist. Up to 1949, he wrote for right-wing periodicals that were
still in business at that time, including the Tygodnik warszawski, the organ of the
Metropolitan Curia in Warsaw. Subsequently, he worked solely as a music critic (in
1951, he was sacked from the Conservatory, together with several other teachers
with a right-wing past). Rytel’s was an important voice in the discussion that arose
following the Warsaw premiere of Lohengrin in 1956. In his post-premiere review
in the periodical Teatr, he outwardly focussed on Berdyaev’s efforts in creating
the production,49 but he gave his piece a hidden subtext orientated towards the
‘problem’ of Wagner in Poland, through the use of such wordings as ‘removal
from the repertoire’ and the ‘bold step’ that the conductor had ‘not feared’:

After arduous, tragic years for the nation, the Warsaw Opera wishes to revive
itself and earn a position commensurate with our musical culture. Seeking to
escape from the strictures of a mediocre repertoire into the broad waters of great
art, the board, in the person of Valerian Berdyaev, decided to take the bold and
difficult step of staging Lohengrin.

It is a bold and difficult step because we have no Wagner singers at all and
few performing artists well acquainted with the Wagnerian style. It is no secret,
indeed, that most members of our Opera’s staff have never seen a work by
Wagner on stage.

So everything had to be started from scratch. But it had to be done! Great art
cannot be avoided simply because of the towering difficulties it presents. Such

48
For more on Berdyaev’s career, see Magdalena Dziadek, ‘Stary, wytrawny lew’
[A seasoned old lion], Operomania 27 (2006–07), pp. 1–3. In 1937 Berdyaev travelled
with a group of students from the Warsaw Conservatory to Berlin as part of an exchange
programme with the Berlin Conservatory. When the Berlin students came to Warsaw the
following year (1938), they gave a concert at the Conservatory which included the overture
to Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. See Dziadek, Od Szkoły Dramatycznej
do Uniwersytetu. Dzieje wyższej uczelni muzycznej w Warszawie 1810–2010. Tom 1:
1810–1944 [From drama school to university. The story of the musical institute of higher
education in Warsaw 1810–2010. Vol. 1: 1810–1944] (Warsaw, 2011), pp. 523–24.
49
Owing to illness on the part of Berdyaev, the premiere performance was actually
conducted by Mieczysław Mierzejewski.
172 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

items as Wagner’s oeuvre cannot be removed from the repertoire simply because
the first attempt might not be as successful as desired. Berdyaev was faced with
an enormous task. This seasoned, professional artist did not fear it.50

1963

The year 1963 saw the 150th anniversary of the birth of Richard Wagner. In Poland,
it was marked – as if to demonstrate the ‘literary’ roots of Polish Wagnerianism
– by a special edition of the periodical Ruch muzyczny.51 It was an international
project: the German author Hans Heinrich Stuckenschmidt was asked to write
a special article, and Hermann Barth from the Bayreuth Festival’s press office,
the man responsible for bringing together musical centres in Central-Eastern and
Western Europe, helped prepare the bibliography and acquire the illustrations.52
Further articles on Wagner in this special issue of Ruch muzyczny were written
by leading Polish musicologists and publicists: Józef Michał Chomiński, Stefan
Jarociński, Bronisław Horowicz, Piotr Rytel, Zygmunt Mycielski, and Ludwik
Erhardt.53 The authors made every effort to show Wagner’s work from a neutral

50
‘Po ciężkich, tragicznych dla narodu latach, Opera Warszawska zdąża do
odrodzenia się i zdobycia pozycji, odpowiadającej naszej kulturze muzycznej. Pragnąc
wyjść z ciasnych ram przeciętnego repertuaru na szersze wody wielkiej sztuki, dyrekcja
w osobie Waleriana Bierdiajewa zdecydowała się na krok śmiały i trudny, na wystawienie
Lohengrina.
‘
Krok to śmiały i trudny, bowiem nie mamy zupełnie śpiewaków wagnerowskich ani
zbyt wielu artystów-realizatorów, dobrze ze stylem wagnerowskim obeznanych. Wiadomo
nawet, że w większości personel naszej opery nie wiedział nigdy dzieł Wagnera na scenie.
‘
Trzeba więc zaczynać wszystko od początku. Ale trzeba! Nie wolno pomijać wielkiej
sztuki dlatego tylko, że piętrzą się trudności. Nie można skreślać z repertuaru takich
pozycji, jak twórczość Wagnera, dlatego tylko, że pierwsza próba może nie udać się tak
dobrze, jak by się pragnęło. Przed Bierdiajewem stanął ogrom pracy. Nie uląkł się go ten
wytrawny i znający swój zawód artysta.’ Piotr Rytel, ‘Lohengrin w operze warszawskiej’
[Lohengrin at the Warsaw Opera], Teatr 9 (1956), p. 15.
51
At that time (from 1959), Ruch muzyczny was edited by Zygmunt Mycielski, a
composer and writer well known for his oppositional views.
52
Barth was director of the youth festivals held at Bayreuth, to which a group of
youngsters from Polish musical institutions of higher education travelled every year.
53
Special issue of Ruch muzyczny 10 (1963): Józef Michał Chomiński, ‘Wagner a
muzyka współczesna’ [Wagner and contemporary music], pp. 4–6; Stefan Jarociński,
‘Destruktorzy pozoru’ [Destroyers of guise], pp. 6–8; Bronisław Horowicz, ‘Teatr Wagnera
wczoraj i dziś’ [Wagner’s theatre yesterday and today], pp. 9–10; Piotr Rytel ‘Dzieła
Wagnera na scenie opery warszawskiej’ [Wagner’s work on the stage of the Warsaw Opera],
pp. 12–13; Zygmunt Mycielski, ‘Dwa spotkania z Wagnerem’ [Two encounters with
Wagner], p. 16; Ludwik Erhardt, ‘Początek czy ciąg dalszy?’ [Beginning or continuation?],
p. 17.
 The Reception of Wagner’s Music and Ideas in Poland 173

perspective, the spectre of the Third Reich appearing solely in the texts of
Jarociński and Mycielski.54 Wagner was adjudged to have been a precursor of
Sonorism (Chomiński),55 an object of criticism on the part of the French Symbolists
(Jarociński) and a man of the theatre (Horowicz). These contributions were in line
with the authors’ personal interests. Only Ludwik Erhardt attempted to diagnose
what Wagner’s work meant for Poles in the 1960s. And it is most promising:

I know Wagner poorly. I confess this with shame, mitigated somewhat by the
fact that few of my peers are in a better situation. Wagner was revered by the
previous generation, but we were raised far away from him, and only today are
we discovering his music for ourselves. And it is already a different Wagner: free
from stage ritual and ceremony, recorded on discs by the most magnificent voices
and orchestras. The content, the words and their meaning, and the construction
of the drama are becoming less important, and what remains is a relishing (as
Bohdan Pociej would say) of the very substance of sound.56

Of considerable significance, albeit only on a local level, were the Wagner

anniversary celebrations organised by Karol Musioł, chief librarian of the State
College of Music in Katowice, a German scholar by training and European
by temperament, and a great lover and promoter of German culture. From 21
November to 21 December 1963, at the Katowice college, he organised the
academic conference ‘Richard Wagner and Polish musical culture’. This was
the first scholarly event devoted to Wagner in post-war Poland. The conference
was accompanied by an exhibition and followed by the publication of a book
containing a bibliography of Polish Wagnerians that is still current today,57 as
well as a list of exhibited objects illustrating the influence of Wagner’s thinking

54
However, Stefan Jarociński ended the part of his text recalling the context of
German fascination with Wagner with the words ‘It is certainly not the fault of Wagner that
history took such a turn.’
55
‘Sonorism’ was a term introduced by Józef Maria Chomiński in his research on
Polish contemporary music. It was first used in his manual Formy muzyczne [Musical
forms] (Kraków, 1974–87). The main work of Chomiński which defines and describes
Sonorism – ‘Fundamenta sonologiae’ – remains unpublished.
56
‘Słabo znam Wagnera. Wyznaję to ze wstydem, uśmierzanym nieco przez fakt, że
niewielu moich rówieśników jest w lepszej sytuacji. Wagnera czciło poprzednie okolenie,
my wychowaliśmy się z dala od niego i dopiero dziś jego muzykę odkrywamy dla siebie.
Jest to już zresztą inny Wagner wolny od rytuału i ceremonii scenicznej, nagrany na płytach
przez najwspanialsze głosy i orkiestry, treść, słowa i ich znaczenie, konstrukcja dramatu
– schodzi na drugi plan i pozostaje smakowanie (jak by powiedział B. Pociej) samej
substancji dźwiękowej.’ Erhardt, ‘Początek czy ciąg dalszy?’, quoted in Erhardt, Papierowe
nosy [Paper noses] (Kraków, 1970), pp. 65–6. See below for more on Bohdan Pociej.
57
‘Ryszard Wagner a Polska. Wystawa 21 XI–21 XII 1963, katalog’ [Richard Wagner
and Poland. An exhibition 21 November–21 December 1963. A catalogue], ed. Karol
Musioł (Katowice, 1963).
174 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

and music both on the November Uprising in Germany and on Polish learning
and musical culture. The exhibition was organised in collaboration with German
libraries, from which exhibits were borrowed (mainly reproductions of pictures
and copies of documents). Musioł also made use of the private collections of
Silesian musicians. Anticipating possible opposition (he was occasionally
accused of ‘Germanophilia’), he chose as the exhibition motto the following
sentence taken from Wagner’s work Die Kunst und die Revolution: ‘Our aim is
a strong and beautiful person, may revolution give him his strength, and art his
beauty.’58
In subsequent years, Karol Musioł worked to propagate German culture in
Poland. He died prematurely in 1981. His friend from the Katowice college, the
composer Witold Szalonek (from 1973 associated with the Hochschule für Musik
in Berlin, where he took over a composition class from Boris Blacher) dedicated
to his memory a work, Elegia na śmierć przyjaciela [Elegy on the death of friend]
for clarinet and piano (1989),59 which includes a Wagner quotation – a fragment of
the ‘Song to the Evening Star’ from Tannhäuser.
The third Wagner premiere in post-war Poland was Der fliegende Holländer,
staged in December 1964 on the boards of the Silesian Opera in Bytom. For this
production, the conductor Karol Stryja was joined by the Viennese director Leo
Nedomansky. A few remarks should be made about this premiere, on account
of the location: Upper Silesia. It would be possible to consider the premiere of
Der fliegende Holländer a watershed in the history of Polish–German cultural
relations in Upper Silesia, were it not for one prosaic circumstance: it occurred
during a period when the Silesian Opera had fallen into deep crisis, following
the dismissal of its director, Włodzimierz Ormicki, after 10 years at the helm.
Standards at this institution declined as a result, and the events held there failed
to attract the attention they deserved from local and national observers. Telling in
this regard is the conclusion to the review written after the Bytom premiere by the
Warsaw critic Józef Kański: ‘so let us be glad of this too’ [i.e. let us be satisfied
with what we have been given, despite its shortcomings].60

A Wagner Renaissance Approaches

Neither the crises of music institutions nor ideological considerations were the
only reasons for the rather modest social resonance of this premiere in Upper
Silesia and the operatic events described above. Also contributing to this state
of affairs was the resistance among producers and consumers of Polish musical

58
Karol Musioł, Ryszard Wagner a Polska [Richard Wagner and Poland] (Katowice,
1963), p. 3.
59
The piece remains unpublished. The score is held by composer’s wife.
60
‘Cieszmy się więc i tym.’ Józef Kański, ‘Trzeci Wagner na polskiej scenie’ [The
third Wagner on a Polish stage], Ruch muzyczny 6 (1965), p. 10.
 The Reception of Wagner’s Music and Ideas in Poland 175

culture (inherited from the time of the avant-garde surge and still in the ascendant
even today) towards late Romantic music and the culture that produced it. It is
enough to glance at music reviews by the aforementioned Wagner defender Stefan
Kisielewski to realise that he continued to perceive late Romanticism as a stilted
trend, psychologically ‘impossible’ and generative of ‘over-elaborate’ art, whose
time and sound had passed. One pre-war enthusiast of Wagnerian theatre, Karol
Stromenger, offered the following comment on Wagner’s theatre, in his capacity
as editor of an opera guide published in 1959:

Wagner’s music drama, loftily conceived […], dubbed ‘opera reform’, was in
reality the realisation of Wagner’s artistic ideals […]. In its time, the significance
of his theatrical ideas was huge and reached beyond Germany […]. Wagner’s
theatrical style is no longer a model for stage composers. Today, we consider
Wagner’s music to be the strongest element of his music dramas. Nonetheless,
the ‘Wagner delusion’ remained a great phenomenon in the cultural life of
bourgeois Europe around the turn of the twentieth century.61

This text could serve as a splendid preface to the next stage in our considerations,
comprising echoes of the premiere of Tannhäuser. This was prepared in Poznań
by the bold young director of the Poznań Opera (from 1962), Robert Satanowski,
who had an extremely complicated political past, having held a post in Karl-Marx-
Stadt and studied music in Berlin with Felsenstein and Karajan.62 This premiere
was held in the spring of 1967, with Satanowski both director and music director.
The discussion that arose among the Poznań critics following Tannhäuser
concerned the currency of Wagnerian theatre; it was prompted by the publication
in the premiere’s programme of an extract from Horowicz’s book Teatr operowy,
in which the author refers critically to Wagner’s naturalistic stage conception.63
Poznań publicists readily followed that path. Władysław Malinowski wrote that
‘Wagner’s theatre would be a parody today’ [teatr Wagnera byłby dziś parodią],64
and Kazimierz Nowowiejski admitted that:

61
‘Dramat muzyczny Wagnera, górnie pojęty […], nazwany “reformą opery” – był
w rzeczywistości urzeczywistnieniem ideałów artystycznych Wagnera […]. Znaczenie
jego idei teatralnych było w swoim czasie bardzo wielkie i sięgało poza Niemcy […]. Styl
teatralny Wagnera nie jest już wzorem dla kompozytorów scenicznych. Dziś uważamy
muzykę Wagnera za najsilniejszą stronę jego dramatów muzycznych. Niemniej jednak
“omam wagnerowski” był wielkim zjawiskiem życia kulturalnego mieszczańskiej Europy
jeszcze na przełomie XIX i XX wieku.’ Karol Stromenger, Przewodnik operowy [Opera
guide], 2nd edn (Warsaw, 1964), p. 420.
62
During the war, Satanowski, a Jew from Łódź, found himself in the Lublin region,
where he organised and led a 100-strong guerrilla unit collaborating with the Soviets.
63
Horowicz, ‘Teatr operowy’.
64
‘Władysław Malinowski, ‘Poznańskie osiągnięcia’ [Poznań’s achievements],
Współczesność 14 (1967), p. 13.
176 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

We even laugh today at that whole Romantic idealism, the rather nebulous
symbolism, the idea of the redemption of a ‘knight errant’ by the ‘pure love’ of
a woman and her suffering […] Wagner’s artificially exalted conceptions, fair
brimful of pathos and bombast, really do belong to the past – which one should
get to know, of course, to have some idea of what our grandparents enjoyed.65

Yet from the mid 1960s there could be observed a new wave of interest in Wagner in
Poland, by no means generated solely by a sudden awakening in society of a curiosity
about his music. The renaissance of the German composer’s art that occurred
towards the end of the decade was a ‘total’ phenomenon, a kind of intellectual
Gesamtkunstwerk, the sources of which reached far beyond a mere fascination with
what was listened to on radio and in recordings, down to the bedrock of ideas for
which a particular need arose in Poland at that time. This was a time when society
was commemorating a grand anniversary: the Millennium of the Polish State. This
was celebrated in 1966, counting from the date of the coronation of the first Polish
monarch, Mieszko I, who received the insignia of power from the German emperor
Otto III. The millennium was marked officially with great solemnity, and many
important events occurred. Among other things, thanks in part to public donations,
1,000 schools were built, and the rebuilding of the Grand Theatre in Warsaw was
completed. However, the year 1966 also brought a great dispute between Church
and State. In the official version, co-produced by historians collaborating with
the regime, the millennium was primarily an opportunity to emphasise Poland’s
ancient links with Slavic lands, more specifically with the East;66 this was necessary,
among other things, in order to disseminate knowledge of the Polish and also Slavic
lineage of the Reclaimed Territories in the west of the country awarded to Poland
in 1945. The Church, on the other hand, defended the traditional version of the
Western, Latin roots of Polish culture and her role as the ‘[Western] bulwark of
Christianity’.67 The most widely publicised part of this important dispute was played

65
‘Wręcz śmieszy nas dzisiaj cały ten romantyczny idealizm, dość mętnawa symbolika,
pomysł odkupienia “zbłąkanego rycerza” przez “czystą miłość” kobiety i jej cierpienie
[…] Sztuczno wzniosłe wagnerowskie koncepcje, aż kapiące od patosu i koturnowości, to
już naprawdę przeszłość – którą oczywiście należy poznać, aby zorientować się, w czym
gustowali nasi dziadkowie.’ Kazimierz Nowowiejski, ‘Monumentalny dramat Wagnera’
[The monumental drama of Wagner], Głos wielkopolski 116 (1967), p. 3.
66
The most important book propagating such a view is Henryk Łowmiański’s
Początki Polski. Z dziejów Słowian w pierwszym tysiącleciu n.e. [The beginnings of Poland.
From the history of Slavs in the first millennium AD] (5 vols, Warsaw, 1963–85).
67
Such a role (in Latin ‘antemurale christianitatis’), assigned to Poland already in the
seventeenth century (in the epoch of Turkish raids), was one of the most important national
myths in Poland, strongly connected with Catholicism. In the nineteenth century on the
other side of the ‘wall’ was Russia; later, the concept of being a ‘bulwark of Christianity’
was directed against the Soviet Union. The well-known proponent of such a vision of
Poland’s role in Europe was a Polish historian living abroad, Oscar Halecki – the author of
a History of Poland, translated into several European languages (French edition New York,
 The Reception of Wagner’s Music and Ideas in Poland 177

out in the pulpits of Polish churches (including on Jasna Góra [Holy Mountain],
where spectacular millennial celebrations were held),68 and in the Catholic press,
including the above-mentioned Tygodnik powszechny, which after its relaunch in
1956 became an important mouthpiece for the Catholic intelligentsia. In the above-
quoted extract from a 1963 article by Ludwik Erhardt, there can be found the
name of the young musicologist Bohdan Pociej, who at that time was a publicist
with Tygodnik powszechny (and also Ruch muzyczny). He used his wide-ranging
humanistic interests, encompassing philosophy and cultural history, to propagate
the universal values of European culture (ostentatiously restricting his survey of that
culture to Western Europe). A musicologist of a rather conservative bent, he also let
off steam in polemics against avant-garde music, which he treated as an exclusively
‘cerebral’ product, devoid of value.69 From there, he launched into an intensive
campaign to promote Romantic music. His intentions in this campaign are explained
in the foreword to his collection of Szkice z późnego romantyzmu [Sketches from
late Romanticism], published in 1978, which brings together articles from the early
1970s printed in Tygodnik powszechny, Ruch muzyczny and elsewhere:

The music that is currently being written seems to me on the whole increasingly
alien and indifferent. Alien, because it is emotionally dry, barren, pretentiously
showy, ostentatiously sloppy, touched by internal decomposition – formal
decay. Alien, because – generally speaking – it is devoid of metaphysicality, of
a sense of the metaphysical, of ‘metaphysical feelings’ […]. I ask myself when
this process, in which I discern the decline, the evanescence of authentic life in
music, began. And what caused it. […] And I turn to those relatively recent times
when music attained the utmost intensity of spiritual and corporeal life. To the
times of its greatest power, might and autonomy.70

Montreal, 1945). In 1966 Tygodnik powszechny initiated a fundamental discussion about

the Christian roots of the Polish state. The discussion started in January with the article
‘O pojęciu patriotyzmu’ [About patriotism] by the well-known philosopher Władysław
Stróżewski (Tygodnik powszechny 2 (1966), p. 1), and was continued by, among others,
Jerzy Turowicz (‘1000’, Tygodnik powszechny 15–16 (1966), p. 1) and Antoni Gołubiew
(‘Rocznica’ [The anniversary] (Tygodnik powszechny 15–16 (1966), p. 3). For more
historical information about the Polish myth of ‘antemurale christianitatis’, see Janusz
Tazbir, Poland as the Rampart of Christian Europe: Myths and Historical Reality, trans.
C.A. Kisiel (Warsaw, 1988); Janusz Tazbir, ‘Polska przedmurzem Europy’ [Poland as the
rampart of Europe] (Warsaw, 2004).
68
Jasna Góra is a Marian sanctuary near Częstochowa, founded in the fourteenth
century, which from the nineteenth century served as the centre of spiritual power over the
Polish nation.
69
This attitude is illustrated by a series of articles in Tygodnik powszechny entitled
‘Sytuacja muzyki współczesnej’ [The situation of contemporary music], written in 1967
(Tygodnik powszechny 15 (1967), pp. 2–3; 29 (1967), p. 4).
70
‘Muzyka aktualnie powstająca wydaje mi się w swojej masie coraz bardziej
obca i obojętna. Obca, bo wysuszona z emocji, wyjałowiona, pretensjonalnie efektowna,
178 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

In 1966, when particular attention began to be paid in Poland to everything that

confirmed the country’s right to consider the great European heritage as its own,
there arose what might be trivially termed a ‘boom’ in European values, and along
with it a fashion for Wagner.
The staging of Tannhäuser in 1967 in Poznań (discussed above), was by no
means Robert Satanowski’s greatest achievement. He also brought about such
events as the Polish premieres of operas by Britten and Ravel in Poznań.71 In 1968,
he prepared and directed Tristan und Isolde. Musical commentators saw this as a
monumental achievement. Bohdan Pociej, who attended the premiere, recalled
in his article ‘Sens sztuki Wagnera’ [The sense of Wagner’s art]: ‘the Poznań
premiere of Tristan und Isolde certainly gave me more material for my reflections
on Romanticism than many a written text’.72 Just what that sense involved was
clarified by the production’s director, Robert Satanowski, but still the ministerial
authorities decided that the premiere of Tristan would be his last act in Poznań.
From Poznań, he moved to Krefeld-Mönchengladbach, from where he sent a
‘goodbye’ letter to Ruch muzyczny, in which he described his vision of operatic
theatre: ‘[Operatic theatre] is a collective experience, a sense of being together,
surrounded by a thousand people, a sense that some kind of trance ensues, that we
can enter into some kind of rhythm together – it is a sense of devotion today.’73
The young Poznań critic Sławomir Pietras ended his review of the premiere
of Tristan with the following description: ‘When the performance had finished,
Antonina Kawecka wept, and Robert Satanowski came out to take his bow with a

ostentacyjnie niedbała, dotknięta wewnętrznym rozkładem – uwiądem formy. Obca,

bo – mówiąc generalnie – pozbawiona metafizyczności, zmysłu metafizycznego,
“metafizycznych uczuć” […]. Zadaję sobie pytanie: kiedy zaczął się ten proces, w którym
upatruję upadek – zanikanie w muzyce autentycznego życia? I jakie były tego przyczyny?
[…] I zwracam się do tych stosunkowo niedawnych czasów, kiedy to muzyka osiągała
pełnię intensywności życia – duchowego i cielesnego. Do czasów jej największej potęgi,
mocy i samoistności.’ Bohdan Pociej, ‘Od autora’ [From the author], in Szkice z późnego
romantyzmu [Sketches from late romanticism] (Kraków, 1978), p. 5. Let us add that the
author developed his simplified view of contemporary music mainly on the basis of what
the Warsaw autumn festival of contemporary music offered on its programmes, which
included quite a lot of works representing the ‘Darmstadt style’.
71
In 1963 the Poznań Opera prepared The Little Sweep by Britten, and in 1968
Ravel’s opera L’enfant et les sortilèges (The child and the spells] was premiered. Also, in
1964 a ballet consisting of Ravel’s La Valse, Valses nobles et sentimentales and works by
Stravinsky and Gershwin was staged.
72
‘Poznańska premiera Tristana i Izoldy dała mi z pewnością więcej dla moich
rozważań nad romantyzmem niż niejedna lektura.’ Bohdan Pociej, ‘Sens sztuki Wagnera’
[The sense of Wagner’s art], Ruch muzyczny 4 (1969), p. 5.
73
‘To przeżycie zbiorowe, uczucie, że się jest razem, w otoczeniu tysiąca ludzi, że
następuje jakiś trans, ze możemy się wspólnie wprawić w jakiś rytm – to jest nasze dzisiejsze
nabożeństwo.’ Robert Satanowski, ‘Partytura jako źródło pomysłów inscenizacyjnych’
[The score as a source of ideas for staging], Ruch muzyczny 3 (1970), p. 3.
 The Reception of Wagner’s Music and Ideas in Poland 179

pallid face […]. That is how the timelessly relevant Wagner moved the artists, the
audience and the critics in Poznań in 1968.’74
Bohdan Pociej devoted his post-premiere text in Tygodnik powszechny to a
search for the work’s metaphysical sense, preserving, like other critics writing
about Satanowski’s Tristan, a lofty, almost bombastic tone: ‘masterpiece’,
‘spirituality’, ‘grandeur’ and ‘depth’ are the key words of that text:

I had long been aware of the premiere of Wagner’s masterpiece on the stage of
the Poznań Opera, of the preparations for that premiere. I accompanied those
preparations in spirit, as it were, with hope and – perhaps greater still – anxiety,
because Tristan und Isolde is perhaps the most difficult of all Wagner’s works,
and it is certainly the most inward and most metaphysical […]. Wagner’s Tristan
und Isolde is a unique musical form of symbolic theatre, treating a grand old
subject that certainly exceeds the capacities of every normal theatre […]. And
that is precisely the deepest, symbolic-metaphysical sense that the directors of
the Poznań production read in Wagner’s work.75

Another witness of the premiere, Andrzej Saturna, connected Satanowski’s ‘feat’

with the mood among Poles during the millennium period: ‘Robert Satanowski
was certainly aware that a suitable moment had arrived for showing Wagner’s
drama, and he understood or sensed the latent social demand for this artistic genre,
not particularly popular here.’76
The next stage in the Wagner renaissance in Poland was marked by the same
Bohdan Pociej, with the publication during the 1970s of a series of articles about

74
‘Po zakończeniu spektaklu Antonina Kawecka płakała, a Robert Satanowski
wyszedł do ukłonów blady […]. Tak to ponadczasowo aktualny Wagner wzruszył w
Poznaniu artystów, publiczność i krytyków w roku 1968.’ Sławomir Pietras, ‘Sukces
poznańskiej opery: Tristan i Izolda’ [A success for the Poznań Opera: Tristan and Isolde],
Gazeta poznańska 5 (1969), p. 4. Antonina Kawecka played Isolde; Robert Satanowski was
the conductor.
75
‘Premierze arcydzieła Wagnera na scenie Opery Poznańskiej, o przygotowaniach
do tej premiery – wiedziałem już od dawna. Towarzyszyłem niejako duchowo tym
przygotowaniom z nadzieją – i z większą może jeszcze – obawą. Tristan i Izolda jest to
bowiem dzieło spośród wszystkich dzieł Wagnera bodajże najtrudniejsze, a z całą pewnością
– najbardziej wewnętrzne i najbardziej metafizyczne […]. Tristan i Izolda Wagnera jest
to jedyna w swoim rodzaju forma muzyczna teatru symbolicznego, eksponującego temat
wielki i stary, na pewno przerastający możliwości każdego normalnego teatru […]. I
właśnie taki sens najgłębszy, symboliczno-metafizyczny odczytali w dziele Wagnera
twórcy poznańskiego spektaklu.’ Bohdan Pociej, ‘“Tristan i Izolda” w Operze Poznańskiej’
[Tristan and Isolde at the Poznań Opera], Tygodnik powszechny 2 (1969), p. 11.
76
‘Robert Satanowski na pewno zdawał sobie sprawę z tego, że nadeszła odpowiednia
pora na prezentację dramatu Wagnera, że zrozumiał czy odczuł utajone zapotrzebowanie
społeczne na ten mało u nas popularny gatunek sztuki.’ Andrzej Saturna, ‘Akord
wagnerowski’ [The Wagner chord], Nurt 3 (1969), p. 20.
180 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

Wagner (as mentioned above), as well as Mahler, Strauss and Bruckner. They
were issued by Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne [Polish Music Publications, or
simply PWM] in 1978 under the collective title Szkice z późnego romantyzmu
[Sketches from late romanticism].77 In these sketches, Pociej expanded on his
vision of the place of Wagner’s art within Romantic ideology. He considered
Tristan and Der Ring from the perspective of the overriding topoi of German
Romantic literature, drawing on such themes as love, death and wandering, and
above all he proclaimed the greatness of Wagner’s art with regard to its links to the
lofty European cultural heritage. The volume in question includes two blocks of
texts devoted to Wagner’s Ring and Mahler’s symphonies. In these pieces, Wagner
is portrayed as the composer who brought about ‘an explosion of meaning and
meaningness in music’ [eksplozja znaczenia i znaczeniowości w muzyce].78 This
line of thinking was guided by important literature being read in Poland at that time.
It was a period that saw the publication of translations of works by Eliade, Lévi-
Strauss, Ricoeur and Gadamer, bringing into public circulation such keywords as
‘symbol’, ‘myth’ and ‘religion’, and also, in respect to academic methodology, the
term ‘hermeneutics’, which became something of a ‘magic’ word.79 And this is the
repertoire from which Pociej drew when arguing the greatness of Wagner’s work.
Also interested in the links between Wagner’s art and Romantic ideologies
during the 1970s was Stefan Jarociński, whose sketch on Wagner was published
by PWM in 1979 in a volume entitled Ideologie romantyczne.80 Yet Jarociński
was more interested in sociological questions, and he focussed on Wagner’s
interpretation of the idea of revolution, seeking the source of the composer’s
fascination with that subject in the turbulent history of Germany during the mid
nineteenth century and in his contacts with Russian anarchists such as Bakunin.
This was not the only aspect in which the links between Jarociński’s thinking
and Marxist ideology was manifest. He generally followed the typically Marxist
assertion that ‘man is inseparably linked to the creator’ [Człowiek’ jest tu
nierozerwalnie związany z twórcą],81 whilst from Oper und Drama he took as a

77
Pociej, Szkice z późnego romantyzmu.
78
Ibid., p. 21.
79
Examples of using these terms can be found in the music criticism and essays of
Marian Wallek-Walewski, Leszek Polony, Bohdan Pociej and Mieczysław Tomaszewski,
and also in papers presented by them during the famous event ‘Spotkania muzyczne w
Baranowie Sandomierskim’ [Music meetings in Baranów Sandomierski], which were
organised under the leadership of Mieczysław Tomaszewski in the years 1976–81. These
materials were published in the series ‘Spotkania muzyczne w Baranowie Sandomierskim.
Muzyka w kontekście kultury’ [The music meanings in Baranów Sandomierski. Music in
the context of culture] (Kraków, 1977–82).
80
Stefan Jarociński, ‘Totalne dzieło sztuki (Wagner i Nietzsche)’ [The total work of
art (Wagner and Nietzsche)], in Ideologie romantyczne [Romantic ideologies] (Kraków,
1979).
81
Ibid., p. 52.
 The Reception of Wagner’s Music and Ideas in Poland 181

leitmotif Wagner’s declaration that he wanted to ‘destroy the established order of

things’ [Pragnę zniszczyć ustalony porządek rzeczy].82
Of these two approaches, it was naturally the writings of the recently deceased
Bohdan Pociej that were more influential within musical circles.83 They delineated
the ‘horizon of expectation’ in respect to Wagner’s music for subsequent decades.
In music criticism, that horizon slowly turned into a sort of standard, if not a
stereotype: henceforth every Polish review of a Wagner production would begin
or end with sentences similar to that with which Józef Kański concluded his report
on the production of Tristan und Isolde by the Berlin Staatsoper in Warsaw in
1967: ‘This was certainly an experience of unusual intensity and profundity for
everyone, as was determined by the very grandeur of the subject and the grandeur
of Wagner’s music.’84
Also in keeping with the Polish tradition is the fact that in the 1970s and 1980s
Wagner premieres given by Polish theatres were exceedingly rare. But one can
hardly speak of tradition in this instance; this state of affairs was affected by the
reality of Polish cultural life, marked by continual crises, resulting from both the
catastrophic socio-economic situation of the late People’s Republic of Poland and
also the personal quarrels that dogged artistic environments. In 1970, when Jan
Krenz was due to take over as artistic director of the Grand Theatre in Warsaw,
he announced impressive repertoire plans, which featured productions of Tristan
and Die Walküre. But ultimately Krenz did not take up the post, and his ambitious
plans fell by the wayside.85 In the 1970s, barely a handful of Wagner premieres
were given, and they were always of the same works: in 1974 Tannhäuser was
staged in Warsaw; in 1977 the new opera house in Bydgoszcz premiered Der
fliegende Holländer; in 1978 there was another premiere of Lohengrin in Poznań;
and in 1980 Tannhäuser was premiered in Łódź. The list of Wagner spectacles
seen in Poland during the last two decades of the People’s Republic closed with a
guest performance of the entire Ring by the Royal Opera of Stockholm in Warsaw,
in 1978. Józef Kański’s review of those performances (Kański was a regular opera
reviewer for Ruch muzyczny) constitutes, as an expression of the state of awareness
of Wagner’s art and its place in contemporary culture, a certain regression in
relation to the 1960s. It may be concluded that the euphoric stage in the Wagner
renaissance, linked to an openness to Romantic inspirations, had already given
way to prejudiced opinions of the outmodedness of Wagnerian theatre and also

82
Ibid., p. 53.
83
Bohdan Pociej is still, even today, regarded as having discovered Wagner, and
especially Mahler, for Polish audiences; this also signals the traditional character of Polish
musical culture, which is fundamentally a culture of the word.
84
‘I z pewnością było to dla wszystkich przeżycie o niecodziennej intensywności i
głębi. Decydowała o tym sama wielkość tematu i wielkość wagnerowskiej muzyki.’ Józef
Kański, ‘Gościnne występy berlińskiej Staatsoper w Warszawie’ [Guest performances of
the Berlin Staatsoper in Warsaw], Ruch muzyczny 22 (1967), p. 10.
85
See Komorowska, Kronika teatrów muzycznych PRL, p. 170.
182 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

the dangerous relationship between Wagnerism and politics. Rightly or wrongly,

Kański harked back to his youth:

[The celebration of Wagner] contributed […] in no small measure to the

revision and radical refreshing of the views on Wagner and his art that had
long been instilled in us and still endure here and there to this day – views on
the longueurs of that art, its alleged inaccessibility and ‘unsuitability’ for the
tastes of contemporary audiences, and especially the atmosphere of Germanic
nationalism that pervades it, which supposedly reached its zenith in the
Nibelungen. The young generation of musicologists and music graduates were
also occasionally treated to such views.86

Between 1980 and 1987, not a single Wagner premiere took place in Polish
opera houses. This was due not to the economic crisis (most theatres coped with
their everyday running during the watershed period of the events of Solidarity
Year, 1981, and the gloomy near-decade of martial law that ensued, 1982–89),
but primarily to a shift in audience expectations. During that period, a great
need for displays of patriotism in the theatre persisted. A number of productions
combining patriotic songs with the national operas of Moniuszko were premiered.
This phenomenon was mirrored in the works of Polish composers of the time,
who occupied themselves with works based on patriotic or religious themes, and
incorporated patriotic or religious songs as symbols of the Polish nation’s battle
for independence. The ‘Polish school’ of the 1980s (an explicit reference to the
nineteenth-century tradition of national music), represented chiefly by Krzysztof
Penderecki, Wojciech Kilar and Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, inadvertently revived a
kind of nationalism within whose parameters the ‘German thread’ represented by
Wagner lost its attractiveness. There were notable exceptions, however, and toward
the end of the People’s Republic of Poland era (1952–89) two Wagner premieres
were mounted by Robert Satanowski at the Grand Theatre in Warsaw, where he
was director: Das Rheingold (March 1987) and Götterdämmerung (April 1988).
Both were prepared by Satanowski himself in collaboration with August Everding
and Günther Schneider-Siemssen, and were part of a planned production of the
whole Ring, which, however, was not realised. An interview given by Satanowski
to the magazine Scena operowa [Operatic scene] shortly before the 1987 premiere

86
‘Przyczyniło się ono w niemałej mierze do rewizji i radykalnego przewietrzenia
zaszczepionych u nas przez czas dłuższy i po dziś dzień jeszcze tu i ówdzie pokutujących
sądów na temat Wagnera i jego sztuki; na temat jej dłużyzn, jej rzekomej nieprzystępności
i “nieprzystawalności” do gustów współczesnego odbiorcy, a zwłaszcza na temat
przenikającej ją atmosfery germańskiego nacjonalizmu, który apogeum swe osiągać miał
właśnie w Nibelungach. Takimi poglądami raczone było nieraz także młode pokolenie
muzykologów i absolwentów uczelni muzycznych.’ Józef Kański, ‘Wagnerowskie święto
w Warszawie’ [The Wagner celebration in Warsaw], Ruch muzyczny 6 (1978), p. 9.
 The Reception of Wagner’s Music and Ideas in Poland 183

of Das Rheingold does not contain any political or ideological allusions,87 and both
productions quickly disappeared from the repertoire without public discussion.
In addition, two concert performances of Wagner’s works took place in Polish
halls: in 1988 the Kraków Philharmonic Orchestra, led by the English conductor
Gilbert Levine, gave three operatic soirées comprising Wagner’s Die Walküre,
Penderecki’s Die schwarze Maske and Mozart’s Don Giovanni; and in 1989 at
the National Philharmonic in Warsaw Jerzy Semkow led a concert performance
of Tristan und Isolde.
From the reviews that appeared in connection with these shows, it is worth
recalling Elżbieta Szczepańska-Malinowska’s text in Ruch muzyczny, as it provides
further confirmation of the stereotypical thinking about Wagner that characterised
Polish music criticism towards the end of the socialist era. The reviewer bemoaned
what she perceived as Semkow’s overly po-faced interpretation, unwittingly
slipping into the style of Bohdan Pociej. She levelled the following accusation at
the conductor: ‘Not once did we witness the perhaps anticipated surge of monstrous
massed sonorities from the orchestra as a means of articulating the explosions of
violent passion.’88 Also from the Pociej lexicon was the expression ‘trivialisation
of extra-musical content’ [trywializacja […] pozamuzycznej treści],89 which was
used rather infelicitously, given that Szczepańska-Malinowska was writing merely
about the paucity of extra-musical meaning in the conductor’s interpretation.
The last question that should be addressed in connection with the Polish
reception of Wagner during the 1980s are references to Wagner in relation to
the dramatic works of Krzysztof Penderecki, who composed three operas during
the 1970s and 1980s: Diabły z Loudun [The devils of Loudun], Raj utracony
[Paradise lost] and Die schwarze Maske [The black mask, to a German libretto].
Their premieres at home and abroad aroused plenty of emotion, and critics and
musicologists alike made every effort to arrive at an apt interpretation of them.
Much attention was paid in particular to the ways and means of the representation
of the subject matter of the librettos; in this respect, Penderecki earned a reputation
as a moralist, in accordance with the needs of Polish audiences already discussed
here and their ‘call for values’ during the period preceding the change of regime.
An important challenge for authors writing about Penderecki’s operas was his
vision of musical theatre, and that is the context within which comparisons between
Penderecki and Wagner appeared. They concerned mainly the generic affinity of

87
Wielkie wydarzenie i sprawdzian możliwości. Z dyrektorem Teatru Wielkiego
Robertem Stanowskim rozmawiał Wiktor A. Brégy [Great event and test capabilities. Wiktor
A. Bregy speaks with Robert Satanowski the director of the Grand Theatre]. Scena operowa
[Operatic scene] (Warszawa 1986/87), p. 21.
88
‘Ani razu […] nie doświadczyliśmy, może oczekiwanego przypływu spotworniałych
mas brzmieniowych jako narzędzia do wyartykułowania wybuchów gwałtownej namiętności.’
ESM [Elżbieta Szczepańska-Malinowska], ‘Tristan i Izolda w wersji koncertowej’ [A concert
version of Tristan and Isolde], Ruch muzyczny 3 (1989), p. 19.
89
Ibid.
184 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

Penderecki’s operas with music drama. This line was taken by Regina Chłopicka,
author of several articles on Penderecki’s operatic art, in which she forged a vision
of an expressionistic art.90 These articles, as well as Chłopicka’s book on the
composer,91 were published outside Poland in 1989, yet they should be treated as a
continuation of the writings of Bohdan Pociej, at least with respect to the author’s
emphasis of ‘value’, which also accorded with the credo of Penderecki himself.
After 1989 a number of articles were published by the Poznań cultural scholar
Krzysztof Kozłowski, whose interests focus on Wagner as a theatre reformer. In
one of Kozłowski’s pieces a parallel between Wagner and Penderecki is to be
found, in the context of theatre reform, the stages of which were also distinguished
by Appia and Craig.92
Given that this chapter addresses Wagner reception in post-communist times,
an attempt might be made, at least cursorily, to examine the current state of the
composer’s reception in Poland. It appears, however, impossible to find any
grounds for stating that the attitude of Polish composers and audiences towards
Wagner has altered substantially since 1989. It is possible simply to suggest
that, although it is still rather too soon for any binding assertions in this regard,
such changes as the cessation of censorship, the opening of borders and the new
way in which Poland functions in Europe have not brought about any kind of
breakthrough in the presence of Wagner’s art in Polish musical life, nor any
changes in the direction or temperature of discussions regarding Wagner. In 1999
a heated discussion about Polish opera theatres took place in Poznań, during which
the noted musicologist Michał Bristiger talked about the necessity of returning to
the formula of great operatic theatre which provides people with a deeply spiritual
experience. His example of such a theatre was quite straightforward: Wagner.93

90
See, for example, Regina Chłopicka, ‘Teatr muzyczny Krzysztofa Pendereckiego’
[The music theatre of Krzysztof Penderecki], in Maciej Jabłoński, Halina Lorkowska and
Jan Stęszewski (eds), Opera polska w XX wieku [Polish opera in the twentieth century]
(Poznań, 1999), p. 99.
91
Regina Chłopicka, Krzysztof Penderecki – między sacrum a profanum: studia nad
twórczością wokalno-instrumentalną [Krzysztof Penderecki between sacred and profane.
Studies of vocal-instrumental works by Krzysztof Penderecki] (Kraków, 2000); the English
version is Krzysztof Penderecki. Musica sacra – musica profana (Kraków, 2002).
92
Krzysztof Kozłowski, ‘Czarna maska Krzysztofa Pendereckiego’ [Krzysztof
Penderecki’s Die schwarze Maske], in Jabłoński et al., Opera polska w XX wieku, pp. 111–
13. Kozłowski refers to Appia’s book Die Musik und Inszenisierung (1899) and Gordon
Craig’s Towards the New Theatre (1913).
93
Michał Bristiger, participating in the discussion ‘Sytuacja teatrów operowych w
Polsce’ [The situation of opera theatres in Poland], in Jabłoński et al., Opera polska w XX
wieku, p. 192.
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204 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

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Livingstone (London and New York: Verso, 2005), pp. viii–xxvii.

Scores and Catalogues

‘Ryszard Wagner a Polska. Wystawa 21 XI–21 XII 1963, katalog’ [Richard Wagner
and Poland: an exhibition 21 November–21 December 1963, catalogue], ed.
Karol Musioł (Katowice, 1963).
Bartoš, František, Jarmil Burghauser and Antonín Čubr (eds), Antonín Dvorak:
Requiem, Dvorak complete edition vocal score, piano arr. by Karel Šolc
(Prague, 1960).
Berkovec, Jiří (ed.), Antonín Dvořák: Svatebni koilse, Dvorak complete edition
vocal score, piano arr. by Karel Šolc (Prague, 1980).
Burghauser, Jarmil, and Karel Šolc (eds), Antonín Dvořák: Concerto in A major,
Violoncello and Piano, Dvorak complete edition (Prague, 1975).
Burghauser, Jarmil, Antonín Dvořák: Thematický katalog [Antonín Dvořák:
thematic catalogue] (Prague: Supraphon, 1996).
Burghauser, Jarmil, Czech preface to Jan Bedřich Kittle, Symfonie Es Dur, Lovecká
[Symphony in E flat major, ‘Hunting’] (Prague: Státní nakladatelství, 1960).
Dvořák, Antonín, Dimitrij, first version, vocal score, piano arr. by Josef Zubatý
and Jindřich Kàan (Prague, 1886).
Janáček, Leoš, Šárka, Opera in 3 Acts, ed. by Jíří Zahrádka and Charles Mackerras
(Vienna: Universal Edition 31 656/EM 78 200, 2002).
Němcová, Alena, Notes accompanying the CD of Šárka [Leoš Janáček] SU 3485-
2 631 (Prague: Supraphon, 2001).
Rimskiy-Korsakov, Nikolay Andreyevich, Iz Gomera, Prelude–Cantata for
Orchestra and Women’s Voices, piano-vocal reduction, ed. by M. V.
Brazhnikov, in N. A. Rimskiy-Korsakov, Complete Collected Works, vol. 44
(Moscow: Muzgiz/Muzyka, 1953).
Rimskiy-Korsakov, Nikolay Andreyevich, Kashchey bessmertnïy, Opera in 1 Act,
piano-vocal reduction, ed. by A. N. Dmitriyev, in N. A. Rimskiy-Korsakov,
Complete Collected Works, vol. 40 (Moscow: Muzgiz/Muzyka, 1953).
Rimskiy-Korsakov, Nikolay Andreyevich, Sadko, Opera in Seven Scenes, piano-
vocal reduction, ed. by G. V. Kirkor in N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, Complete
Collected Works, vol. 19a (Moscow: Muzgiz/Muzyka, 1951).
Rimskiy-Korsakov, Nikolay Andreyevich, Skazaniye o nevidimom grade Kitezhe
i deve Fevronii [The legend of the invisible city of Kitezh and of the maiden
Fevroniya] (Leipzig: Belyayev, 1906).
 Bibliography 205

Šourek, Otakar (ed.), Antonín Dvořák: Stabat Mater, Dvorak complete edition
vocal score, piano arr. by Karel Šolc (Prague: Supraphon, 1973).
Strauss, Richard, Elektra (Berlin: Adolph Fürstner, 1916).
Taneyev, Sergey Ivanovich, Oresteia, Musical Trilogy in Three Parts, piano-vocal
reduction (Leipzig: M. P. Belaïeff, 1900).
This page has been left blank intentionally
 Index
Abbate, Carolyn xxiv–xv
Adorno, Theodor xxvi, xxxi–xxxii, 75,
87–90
Versuch über Wagner [Essay on
Wagner; sometimes In Search of
Wagner] xxxi–xxxii, 87–9
Aleksandr III, Tsar of Russia 52
Allegri, Gregorio 29
Miserere mei, Deus [Have mercy on
me, O God] 29
Anger, Mořic 96
Anti-Semitism xxxi, 54, 87–8, 170; see
also Jews, Judaism; Wagner,
writings, Das Judenthum in der
Musik [Judaism in Music]
Appia, Adolphe xx–xxii, 164, 184
Die Musik und die Inszenierung [Music
and Staging] xx, 184
art nouveau 93, 161
Arensky, Anton Stepanovich 6, 21
Azanchevsky, Mikhail Pavlovich 28
Babia Góra [Witches’ Mountain] 156
Bach, Johann Sebastian xxvii, 22, 26, 29,
55, 60, 105, 116
St Matthew Passion 29
Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich xxi, xxiv
Bakunin, Mikhail 180
Balakirev, Mily Alekseyevich xvii, xxxv,
23–33, 35–6, 47, 160
Balakirev Circle, see Moguchaya kuchka
Baltic provinces xxxiv
Balyasny, Mikhail 55–6
Nibelungov shchit [The Shield of the
Nibelungs] 55–6
Barth, Hermann 172
Bartlett, Rosamund xv, xvii, xix, xxiii,
xxvii, xxxii–xxxiv, 2–3, 32, 35, 50,
56, 59, 64, 69
Bartošova, Fedora 124
Baudelaire, Charles xxii, xxiv, xxvi, 144,
160
Fleurs du mal [Flowers of Evil] xxii
Bayreuth xvi xvii, xx, xxiii, xxv, xxx,
xxxvi, 3–4, 7, 59, 61, 75, 137–8,
140, 144, 147, 149, 151, 153, 157,
159–60, 162, 164, 170, 172
Bayreuther Blätter [Bayreuth Pages] xxiii,
111, 114, 134
Beckerman, Michael xxix
Beethoven, Ludwig van xvii, xix, xxviii,
4, 21–2, 26–7, 60, 77, 95, 104, 113,
148, 166–7
Fidelio, Op. 72 113
Missa Solemnis, Op. 123 104
Symphony no. 9 in D minor, Op. 125
xix, 77, 95
Belayev, Mitrofan Petrovich 32
Bel’sky, Vladimir Ivanovich 24, 27, 31,
37, 45,
Bely, Andrey xxiii, xxvi, 19, 50, 54, 71
Benda, Georg [Jiří] 108
Ariadne 108
Medea 108
Berdyaev, Walerian 57, 168, 170–72
Berlin xii, xviii, 2, 19–20, 22, 73, 94, 163,
169, 171, 174–5, 181
Conservatory 171
Hochschule für Musik 174
Staatsoper 169, 181
Berlioz, Hector xvii, 26, 29, 93–4, 155
Bernandt, Grigory Borisovich 1, 3–5, 8–9, 49
bïlina [epic tale] 55
Birmingham Festival 111
Blacher, Boris 174
Blodek, Vilém 107
V studni [In the Well] 107
Blok, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich xxiii, 54,
71, 79, 86
Böcklin, Arnold 141
208 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands
Bodenstein, Willy 169–70
Bohemia xxi, xxxiii, xxxv, 99, 114, 160;
see also Prague
Borodin, Aleksandr Porfirevich 13, 27, 30
Brahms, Johannes xv, xxvii, xxix, xxxi,
109–11, 116–17, 165
Symphony no. 1 in C minor, Op. 68
xxix
Brégy, Wiktor 170, 183
Bristiger, Michał 184
Britten, Benjamin 178
The Little Sweep, Op. 45 178
Brno 119–20, 127
National Theatre 120
Provisional Theatre 119
Bruckner, Anton xxv–xxvi, 60, 165, 180
Bruneau, Alfred 36
Messidor 36
Brussels 35, 53
Bryusov, Valery Yakovlevich xxiii
Bulgakov, Sergey Nikolayevich 65, 69
Burne-Jones, Edward 141
Čech, Adolf 99–101
censorship xxxiv, 63, 166, 184
Čermáková, Anna 102
Červinková-Riegrová, Marie 109
Česká Thalia [Czech Thalia] 119
Chateaubriand, François-René de 123
Les Aventures du Derniere Abencerage
[The Last Abencerage] 123
Chausson, Amadée-Ernest xv, xxviii
Cherubini, Luigi 95
Chłopicka, Regina 184
Chlubna, Osvald 120
Chopin, Frederic xi, 26–7, 148, 167
Chrysander, Friedrich xxix
Comte, Auguste xxvii
Constantinople 55, 65, 68
Craig, Gordon 164, 184
Cui, César Antonovich 27, 30–31
Angelo 31
Czech National Revival, see Prague,
national revival
Dahlhaus, Carl xxvii–xxviii
Dalibor [periodical] 102–3, 107; see also
Smetana, Dalibor [opera]
Dargomïzhsky, Aleksandr Sergeyevich
xvii–xviii, 27, 31, 47
Rusalka xvii, 27
Kamennïy gost’ [The Stone Guest] 31
Darwin, Charles xxvii
Debussy, Claude xv
Pélléas et Melisande xv
Dessau Opera Theatre 169–70
Diaghilev, Sergey xvi
D’Indy, Vincent xxviii, 4, 37, 47
Dobrzyński, Wacław Tadeusz 146–7
Dostoevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich 57, 59,
64, 71, 85
Dresden 44, 76, 94, 148
Duparc, Henri 4
Durïlin, Sergey Nikolayevich 49–50, 56,
59–63, 66, 68, 71
Vagner i Rossiya [Wagner and Russia]
49, 59–60
Dvořák, Antonín xxvii–xxxi, xxxv–xxxvi,
93–117, 119–20, 130, 134
Baroque convention 104–6, 110
choral/vocal works
Dědicové bílé hory [The Heirs of
the White Mountain], B 27
102
Requiem Mass, B 165 110–12, 116
Stabat Mater, B 71 104–6, 110–11,
116
Svatební košile [The Spectre’s
Bride], B 135 110–11
Svatá Ludmila [St Ludmila], B 144
110
grand opera 109, 112–14
instrumental works
Cello Concerto in A major, B 10
97–8, 114
Karneval [Carnival], B 169 111
Othello, B 174 111
Piano Concerto in G minor, B 63
104
Slavonic Dances (series 1), B 78
104
String Serenade in E major, B 52
104
Violin Concerto in A minor, B 96
109
 Index
Wind Serenade in D minor, B 77
104
melodrama xxviii, 108–9
music drama 98, 100–103, 107–9, 114
operas
Alfred, B 16 95–6, 98–101, 106,
116
Armida, B 206 xxxv, 100, 104,
114, 116
Čert a Káča [The Devil and Kate],
B 201 xxxv, 114
Dimitrij, B 186 xxix, 108–9,
112–14, 116
Jakobín, B 200 116
Král a uhlíř [The King and the
Charcoal Burner], B 151
100–103, 116
Rusalka, B 203 xxxv, 114–15, 117
Vanda, B 55 100, 109
religious sublime 110–12, 116
The Song of Hiawatha xxviii
symphonies
Symphony no. 2 in B major, B 12
96
Symphony no. 3 in E major, B 34
96, 103
Symphony no. 4 in D minor, B 41
103
Symphony no. 5 in F major, B 54
104
Symphony no. 6 in D major, B 112
109
Symphony no. 8 in G major, B 163
111
Symphony no. 9 in E minor ‘From
the New World’, B 178 xxviii,
xxix, 112
vocal works
Cypřiše [Cypresses], B 11 97
Wagner manner 99–100, 110–11, 114,
116
Dvořák, Otakar 102
Dvůr Králové manuscript 121
Edinburgh Festival 120
Eiges, Konstantin Romanovich 22, 56,
63, 191
Eisenstein, Sergey Mikhailovich 71
209
Ekielski, Władysław 155–7
Eliade, Mircea 180
Ellis [Kobïlinsky, Lev L’vovich] 50,
58–60, 64
Engel’, Yuly Dmitriyevich 43, 56
Erhardt, Ludwik 172–73, 177
von Eschenbach, Wolfram 57
Everding, August 182
Fairclough, Pauline xxxiv
Fauré, Gabriel 4
Felsenstein, Bruno 175
Fibich, Zdeněk 102, 106–9, 116
Blaník, H 216 107
Bukovín, H 149 102
Hippodamie [trilogy], H 294, H 296 &
H 298 108–9
Nevěsta Messinská [The Bride of
Messina], H 268 107–8
Šárka, H 321 116
Findeyzen, Nikolay Fyodorovich xviii,
39, 47
Finland xxxiv
First World War xxxv
Fitelberg, Grzegorz 168–71
Feuerbach, Ludwig 77
Franck, César xxviii, xxx, 4
Symphony in D minor, M 48 xxviii
Gesamtkunstwerk [The Total Art Work]
xvi, xviii–xix, 4, 46, 90, 146, 156,
176
German Romanticism xix
Glatzer Rosenthal, Bernice xxiii, xxviii,
xxxii, 10, 50, 52, 54, 57, 59, 69
Glazunov, Aleksandr Konstantinovich 6,
35, 39
Glinka, Mikhail Ivanovich xvii, 2, 26, 29,
31, 43–4, 47
Ruslan i Lyudmila [Ruslan and
Lyudmila] 31, 44
Göbl, Aloïs 113
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 85, 107
Der Fischer [The Fisherman] 107
Gogol’, Nikolay Vasil’evich 30
Gor’ky, Maxim [Peshkov, Alexey
Maximovich] 85
210 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands
Pesnya o Burevestnike [The Song of
the Stormy Petrel] 85
Gornfel’d, Arkady 59
Górski, Artur 66–8, 161
Górzyński, Zdzisław 169–70
Gostomski, Valery 138
Gounod, Charles 109
Faust 109
Gozenpud, Abram Akimovich 4, 6, 71, 88
Great War, see First World War
Gruber, Roman 79, 88
Grubowski, Józef 163
Halbe, Gregory xxxvii, 33–4
Hamburg Opera 163
Handel, George Frideric xxvii, 6, 26, 29,
60, 110, 116,
Israel in Egypt 6, 29
Hanslick, Eduard xxiv–xxv, 94
Haydn, Franz Joseph 4, 26, 29, 60, 95, 110
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 72, 154
Herzen, Alexander Ivanovich 4–5
Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Amadeus xvii,
xx–xxi, xxii, 77
Kreisleriana xxi
Hostinský, Otakar 107–8
Horowicz, Bronisław 164, 172–3, 175
Hudební listy [Musical Pages] 102, 119,
134
Humperdinck, Engelbert 115
Hungary 168
Impressionism 74, 161
Ivanov, Vyacheslav Ivanovich xxiii, 60,
71, 86
Jabłonowski, Władysław 160–61
Jachimecki, Zdzisław 163
Janáček, Leoš xi, xxvii, xxxi, xxxvi, 114,
119–24, 126–35
Jenůfa, JW i/4 120, 123–4, 128–30,
133–5
Kát’a Kabanová, JW i/8 135
Osud [Fate], JW i/5 123–4, 129
Příhody lišky Bystroušky [Adventures
of the Vixen Bystrouška], JW i/9
123, 135
Šárka, JW i/1 xxxvi, 119–35
Věc Makropulos [The Makropulos
Secret], JW i/10 135
Z mrtvého domu [From the House of
the Dead], JW i/11 123, 135
Jarociński, Stefan 172–3, 180
Jasna Góra 177
Jellenta, Cezary 161
Jews, Judaism xvi, 6, 54, 88 106, 170,
175; see also anti-Semitism;
Wagner, writings, Das Judenthum
in der Musik
Joachim, Josef 109
Kalevala xxix
Kański, Józef 174, 181–2
Karajan, Herbert von 175
Kashkin, Nikolay Dmitriyevich 43
Katowice 168, 173–4
State College of Music 173
Kawecka, Antonina 178–9
Kisielewski, Stefan 165–7, 175
Kittl, Jan 94
Bianca und Giuseppe 94
von Klenze, Leo 157
Valhalla Memorial at Regensburg 157
Klindworth, Karl 3, 11, 22
Kobïlinsky, Lev L’vovich, see Ellis
Kołaczkowski, Stefan 152, 164
Kolomiytsov, Viktor Pavlovich 59
Körner, Karl Theodor 98–9, 116
Alfred der Grosse 98, 116
Kovařik, Josef Jan xxix, 112
Kovařovic, Karel 116
Kozłowski, Krzysztof 149, 156, 184
Kołaczkowski ,Stefan 152, 164
Kraków 137, 141–4, 150–51, 155, 162–5,
170, 183
Franciscan Church 142, 144
Vistula River 109, 148–51, 154–8
Wawel 149–51, 153, 155–8, 162
Krasiński, Zygmunt 161
Krejčí, Josef 95
Krenz, Jan 168, 181
Król Duch [The King Spirit], see Słowacki,
Król Duch
Kruglikov, Semyon Nikolayevich 7–8, 29,
43–4
Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeyevich 90
 Index
Kvapil, Jaroslav 114
Lange, Antoni 162
Langer, Eduard Leopoldovich 2–3
Laroche, Herman Avgustovich 2, 9, 71
Latoszewski, Zygmunt 163
Leeds Festival 109
Leipzig 19–20, 119
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim xxi
Laocöon xxi
Leitmotif xxiii–xxiv, xxvi, xxviii, 13–14,
19, 22, 33–4, 39, 47, 100, 108, 111,
114, 116, 132–3, 154, 181
Lévi-Strauss, Claude 180
Lenin, Vladimir Il’ich 69
Levine, Gilbert 183
Lipski, Józef 163
Liszt, Ferenc [Franz] xvii, 21, 26, 94, 98,
115, 160
Łowmiański, Henryk 176
London Philharmonic Society 110
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth xxviii
Hiawatha, see Dvořák, The Song of
Hiawatha
Lortzing, Gustav Albert 103
Zar und Zimmermann 103
Losev, Aleksey Fyodorovich xxvi, xxxi,
xxxv, 71–91
Dialektika mifa [The Dialectics of
Myth] 72–3, 84
Istoriya antichnoy estetiki [History of
Ancient Aesthetics] 72
‘Problema Rikharda Vagnera v
proshlom i nastoyashchem’ [The
problem of Richard Wagner in the
past and the present] 72
Problema simvola i realisticheskoye
iskusstvo [The problem of the
symbol and realist art] 72, 83–7
Lunacharsky, Anatoly Vasil’evich 71
L’viv 160–1, 163
L’vov, General Alexey xviii
Mackerras, Sir Charles 120
Mączewski, Przemysław 146–7, 150
Mahler, Gustav xxx, 37–8, 47, 165,
180–81
Makowiecki, Tadeusz 155
211
Malinowski, Władysław 175
Mandyczewski, Eusebius 95
Mann, Thomas 74
Marxism 72, 87, 180
Mattheson, Johann 105
Der vollkommene Capellmeister [The
Perfect Chapelmaster] 105
Matuszewski, Ignacy 138–9, 141, 145–7
Słowacki i nowa sztuka [Słowacki and
new art] 138, 141
Medtner, Emil Karlovich xxiii, 50, 54, 58
Medtner, Nikolay Karlovich 54
The Meister xxiii
Melgunov, Nikolay Aleksandrovich xix
melodrama xxviii, 107–9
Mendelssohn, Felix xxvii, xxxi, 4, 26, 95,
110, 117
Merezhkovsky, Dmitry Sergeyevich xxiii
Messiaen, Olivier 41–2
Meyerhol’d, Vsyevolod Emil’evich 164
Mickiewicz, Adam 141, 144, 161
Miciński, Tadeusz xxvi, 162
Młoda Polska [Young Poland] 141, 147,
161–2
Moguchaya kuchka [The Mighty Handful]
xvii, 23, 26–8, 30–34, 46–7
Moltke, Hans Adolf von 163
Moniuszko, Stanisław 159, 163, 182
Halka 163
Moravia xxxi, xxxiii, xxxvi, 119, 120,
133
Moreau, Gustav 141
Moscow xvi–xvii, 1–11, 21, 35, 42–3, 57,
63, 67, 72
Conservatoire 2–6, 21
Imperial University 72
Wagner Society 6, 11
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus xvii, xxvii,
4–6, 8, 10, 26, 29, 60, 93–5, 116,
167, 183
Don Giovanni 5–6, 93, 183
Muck, Karl 35
Munich 106, 148
Musaget [publishing house] 49
Musioł, Karol 173–4
Musorgsky, Modest Petrovich 13, 26–7,
85
Boris Godunov 13
212 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands
Khovanshchina 13
Muzïka [Music] 67
Mycielski, Zygmunt 172–3
myth, mythology xv, xix, xxi–xxii, xxiv,
xxvi, xxviii–xxx, xxxv, 51, 55,
57–62, 72, 75–8, 82–90, 114, 122,
138, 145, 149, 152–6, 161–2,
176–7, 180
mythopoesis xv, xxii, xxiv–xxvi, xxviii–
xxix, 138
narod [the common people] 49, 52, 55, 57,
60–62, 64–6, 68
narodnost’ [ethnicity, nationality], see
narod
nationalism xxxi, xxxv, 23, 50–54, 56, 59,
68–9, 76, 79, 88, 90, 119, 121–3,
143, 145, 160, 166, 170, 182
national identity 51–2, 59
Nazi Party [National Socialist German
Workers’ Party] 88–9, 168; see
also Third Reich
Nedomansky, Leo 174
Nejedlý, Zdeněk xxxi
Neumann, Angelo 6, 35, 106
New Economic Policy 69
New German School xvii
New York xxix, 111–2
Metropolitan Opera 112
Philharmonic Orchestra xxix, 112
Nibelungenlied [Song of the Nibelungs]
54, 121
Nietzsche, Friederich xv–xvi, xix, xxii,
xxiv–xxvi, xxx, 58, 65, 67, 74, 115,
137–8, 140–45, 149, 151–6, 161–2,
164
Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem
Geiste der Musik [The Birth of
Tragedy] xxv, xxx
Der Fall Wagner [The Case of Wagner]
xxiv, 115, 138, 145
Jeneseits von Gut und Böse [Beyond
Good and Evil] 145
Richard Wagner in Bayreuth xv, xxx,
153, 162
Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen
[Untimely Meditations] 137
Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie
für das Leben [On the advantage
and disadvantage of history for
life] 152
Nikisch, Arthur 20
Nikolay II, Tsar of Russia 52
Nikolayevna, Grand Duchess Maria xviii
Norse mythology 54, 57
Novoye zveno [New link] 55
Nowowiejski, Kazimierz 175
octatonicism, see Rimsky-Korsakov,
octatonicism
Odoyevsky, Prince Vladimir Fyodorovich
xvii–xviii
Opieński, Henryk 142, 149–50
Ormicki, Włodzimierz 174
Orthodox Church, see Russian Orthodox
Church
Paganini, Niccolò 94
Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da 29
Pall Mall Gazette 96
Paris xxii, 3, 4, 6, 156, 164
Pasdeloup, Jules 4
Pavlovna, Grand Duchess Elena xviii
Penderecki, Krzysztof 182–4
Diabły z Loudun [The Devils of
Loudun] 183
Die schwarze Maske [The Black Mask]
183–4
Raj utracony [Paradise Lost] 183
Petrovsky, Evgeny Maksimovich 38–9, 47
Pietras, Sławomir 178–9
Piniński, Leon 160
Piscator, Erwin 164
Plzen 114
Pociej, Bohdan 173, 177–81, 183–4
Szkice z późnego romantyzmu
[Sketches from late Romanticism]
177–8, 180
Poland xxxiii, xxxiv, xxxvi, 137–84
Państwowy Instytut Sztuki Teatralnej
[State Institute of Theatrical Arts]
165
partitions 159
People’s Republic of Poland 166,
181–2
 Index
Polish Radio Orchestra 168
Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne
[Polish Music Publications] 180
Porges, Heinrich 96
Poznań 160, 163, 168–70, 175, 178–9,
181, 184
Opera 163, 168–9, 170, 175, 178–9
Presley, Elvis xxv
Prague 35, 93–8, 100–102, 104–107, 114,
116, 119–20, 129
Czech National Theatre 93, 97,
100–102, 106, 108, 114, 116
Czech Provisional Theatre 97,
100–103, 106, 108–109
Conservatoire 94–5, 97
national revival 93, 107–108
Organ School 93, 95, 104
Procházka, Ludevít 102
Prokofiev, Sergey Sergeyevich 165
Rachmaninov, Sergey Vasil’evich xviii, 11
Ravel, Maurice 178
L’enfant et les sortilèges (The Child
and the Spells], M 71 178
Reinhardt, Max 164
Reissiger, Karl 94
Revue wagnérienne xxiii, 160
Richter, Hans 112
Ricoeur, Paul 180
Rimsky-Korsakov, Andrey Nikolayevich
23, 38, 45–6
Rimsky-Korsakov, Mikhail Nikolayevich
37
Rimskaya-Korsakova, Nadezhda
Nikolayevna 38
Rimskaya-Korsakova, Sonya Nikolayevna
39
Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolay Andreyevich
xvii, xxvi, xxvii, xxxv, 6, 7, 13,
23–48, 62–3, 74, 85
Iz Gomera [from Homer], Op. 60
35–6, 47
octatonicism 40–42
operas
Boyarïnya Vera Sheloga [The
Nobelwoman Vera Sheloga] 47
Kashchey bessmertnïy [Kashchey
the Immortal] 38–44, 47
213
Mayskaya noch’ [May Night] 33–4
Mlada 13, 35, 40, 47
Motsart i Sal’eri [Mozart and
Salieri] 44, 47
Pskovityanka [The Maid of Pskov]
33–4
Sadko 41, 44, 47
Serviliya 47
Skazaniye o nevidimom grade
Kitezhe i deve Fevronii [The
Legend of the Invisible City
of Kitezh and of the Maiden
Fevroniya] xxvi, 41, 62
Skazka o Tsare Saltane [The Tale
of Tsar Saltan] 37
Snegurochka [The Snow Maiden]
13, 33–4
Zolotoi petushok [The Golden
Cockerel] 31
Symphony no. 1 in E minor, Op. 1 27
Robertson, Alec 115, 117
Romanticism xix, xxi, xxvii–xxviii, xxxvi,
52, 60, 74–5, 77–8, 86, 90, 93–4,
115, 122–3, 128–31, 133, 137,
139–41, 145, 151, 161–2, 165,
175–8, 180–81
Ropartz, Joseph Guy xxviii
Rubinstein, Anton Grigor’evich xvii–xviii,
2, 26–7, 160
Rubinstein, Nikolay Grigor’evich 3
Ruch muzyczny [Musical Movement] 160,
172, 177–8, 181, 183
Russian Musical Society 3, 8
Russkaya muzïkal’naya gazeta [Russian
Musical Gazette] 24, 39, 65
Russkiye vedomosti [Russian News] 3,
56, 59
Russell, Anna xvi
Russian Orthodox Church 63, 72
Russian Silver Age xxiii, xxxv
Rydel, Lucjan 162
Sabaneyev, Leonid Leonidovich 1–2, 7,
10–11, 20–21
Saint-Saëns Camille 4
Sala, Luca xxxiv
Salmi, Hannu xxxiv
Satanowski, Robert 175, 178–9, 182–3
214 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands
Saturna, Andrzej 179
Scena operowa [Operatic Scene] 182–3
Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph
xx, xxvii
Philosophie der Kunst [Philosophy of
Art] xx
Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich von
85, 108
Die Braut von Messina 107–8
Schloezer, Boris xxviii
Schneider-Siemssen, Günther 182
Schönzeler, Hans-Hubert xxv–xxvi
Schoenberg, Arnold xv–xvi, 48
Poétique musicale xvi
Schopenhauer, Arthur xxiii, 75, 77
Schubert, Franz xxvii, 110
Schulzová, Aněžka 109
Schumann, Robert xix–xx, xxvii, 26, 95,
116
Schumann, Clara 94
Schuré, Eduard 160, 162
Scriabin, Aleksandr Nikolayevich
xxvii–xxviii, xxx, 11, 85
Mysterium [unfinished] xxviii, xxx
Poème de l’Extase [Poem of Ecstasy],
Op. 54 xxviii
Seidl, Anton xxix, 111–12
semiotics 83–4
Semkow, Jerzy 183
Serov, Aleksandr Nikolayevich xvi, xvii,
27, 31, 33, 71
Judith xvi, 32
Rogneda 31
Shaginyan, Marietta Sergeyevna 58–60, 64
Shaw, George Bernard 74
Sikorski, Józef 159–160
Silver Age, see Russian Silver Age
Simrock [publishing firm] 96
Słowacki, Juliusz xxxvi, 137–41, 144–7,
151, 161
Genesis z Ducha [Genesis of the Spirit]
139–40
Król Duch [The King Spirit] xxxvi,
137, 139–41, 145, 147, 151, 158
Smetana, Bedřich 101, 106–7, 109, 116,
119, 128, 130
operas
Braniboři v Čechách [The
Brandenburgers in Bohemia],
JB 1:87 99
Dalibor, JB 1:101 107
Dvě vdovy [The Two Widows],
JB 1:108 103
Hubička [The Kiss], JB 1:104 103
Libuše, JB 1:102 122
Prodaná nevěsta [The Bartered
Bride], JB 1:100 103, 113
Rybář [The Fisherman], melodrama,
JB 1:97 107
Socialist Realism 164, 166, 170
Solov’yov, Vladimir Sergeyevich 52–4,
64–5, 68, 72
Drakon [The Dragon] 53
Song of the Nibelungs, see Niebelunglied
Sovetskaya muzïka [Soviet Music] 24
Spohr, Louis 95
Stalin, Joseph xxxiv, 71, 76, 79, 90, 166
Stark, Eduard 63–4
Stasov, Vladimir Vasil’evich 71
Stockholm 181
Royal Opera 181
Strauss, Richard 19, 36–8, 47, 60, 115,
165–8, 180
Also sprach Zarathustra [Thus spake
Zarathustra], Op. 30 36–7
Elektra, Op. 58 20, 126
Guntram, Op. 25 36
Salome, Op. 54 37
Stravinsky, Igor Fyodorovich xvi, xviii,
42, 165, 178
Strohm, Heinrich 163
Stromenger, Karol 164–5, 175
Stryja, Karol 174
Stuckenschmidt, Hans Heinrich 172
St Petersburg xvi, 26–8, 34–5, 42, 44,
46–7, 96
Conservatoire xvii, 26–8, 47
Free School of Music 29
Hermitage Theatre 56
Mariinsky Theatre 31–2
Šubert, František 106, 114
Šourek, Otakar 98, 111
The Sunday Times 93, 95–7, 100–101
Sweden xxxiv
 Index
Symbolism, Symbolists xxi, xxii, xxvi,
xxxiv, 23, 49–50, 54, 58–60, 71–2,
74, 77–8, 83–7, 90, 140–41, 167,
173, 176
synaesthesia xxi–xxii, 147
syncretism 137, 145–7, 158
Szalonek, Witold 174
Elegia na śmierć przyjaciela [Elegy on
the Death of a Friend] 174
Szczepańska-Malinowska, Elżbieta 183
Szeligowski, Tadeusz 169
Bunt żaków [The Student Revolt] 169
Szymanowski, Karol 163, 165, 167, 170
Harnasie, Op. 55 163
Taneyev, Sergey Ivanovich xvii, xxvi,
xxxv, 1–22
Oresteia [opera] 1–22
Oresteia Overture, Op. 6 8
Taruskin, Richard xxxiii, xxxvii, 32,
40–2, 47
Tatra Mountains 156, 162
Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Il’ich xvii, xxviii,
xxxi, 1–3, 5–7, 9–10, 13, 21–2, 26,
30, 71, 74, 148, 167
Eugene Onegin, Op. 24 xxxi
Romeo and Juliet (Overture-Fantasy)
30
Symphony no. 4 in F minor, Op. 36
xxviii
Symphony no. 5 in E minor, Op. 64
xxviii
Third Reich 163, 166, 173; see also Nazi
Party
Tolstoy, Lev Nikolayevich xvi, 11, 19–20,
71, 74
What is Art? xvi, 20
Tomášek, Jan Václav Křtitel 94
Tovey, Donald 110–11
Trubetskoy, Evgeny Nikolayevich 64–5,
68
Trudï i dni [Work and Days] 55, 58
Tygodnik powszechny [General Weekly]
166, 171, 177, 179
Vaughan Williams, Ralph 114
Verdi, Giuseppe xvii, 104, 117
La Traviata 100, 104
215
verismo 47, 114
Viardot, Pauline 4
Vietinghoff-Scheel, Baron Boris xviii
Vienna 10, 45, 120
Vogel, Jaroslav 132
Vol’fing, see Medtner, Emil
Vrchlický, Jaroslav 108, 116
Wagner, Richard
1863 Russian concert tour xvi, xvii–
xix, 3, 32, 96
Bianca und Giuseppe (libretto), see
Kittl, Jan
Conductor xviii, xxii, 32, 96
Faust Overture 97
Gesamtkunstwerk, see
Gesamtkunstwerk (main entry)
musical style
leitmotif, see leitmotif (main entry)
‘sea of harmony’ xxiii, xxvi, xxix
operas, music dramas
Die Feen [The Fairies], WWV 32
77
Der fliegende Holländer [The
Flying Dutchman], WWV 63
13, 35, 96, 163, 168–70, 174,
181
Lohengrin, WWV 75 xviii, xxii,
13, 20, 22, 32, 77, 95–6, 106,
109, 127, 129–30, 133, 137,
148, 151, 160–61, 163, 168,
170–72, 181
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
[The Mastersingers of
Nuremberg], WWV 96 xvi,
xviii, 6, 11, 20, 33, 45–6, 97,
100–101, 129, 168, 171
Parsifal, WWV 111 xxi, xxvi,
xxxv, 2, 9, 13, 17, 20–22, 51,
56–69, 82, 116, 124, 133, 137,
148, 155, 161, 163
Der Ring des Nibelungen [The
Ring of the Nibelungs] xvii–
xix, xxiv, xxix, 1, 6–9, 13,
20, 22, 33, 35, 40, 44, 46–7,
51, 54–8, 65, 67–9, 72–4, 76,
79–80, 82, 87, 89, 109, 112,
114, 123, 126, 129, 133, 135,
216 Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands
141, 145, 147, 149, 161, 163,
180–82
Götterdämmerung [Twilight
of the Gods], WWV 86D
xxiv, xxviii–xxix, 7,
10–11, 19, 22, 89, 122–3,
125–6, 129, 182
Das Rheingold [The
Rhine Gold], WWV 86A
22, 44–5, 106–7, 114,
122–3, 137, 149–50, 155,
182–3
Siegfried, WWV 86C xvi, 6,
10, 19, 22–3, 38–47, 51–5,
58, 61, 65–9, 78, 89, 122,
127, 129
Die Walküre [The Valkyrie],
WWV 86B xvi, xxv, 7,
11, 13, 20, 22, 35, 71, 97,
50, 106, 111, 124, 130–31,
161, 181, 183
Rienzi, der letzte der Tribunen
[Rienzi, the Last of the
Tribunes], WWV 49 22, 96, 135
Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg
auf Wartburg [Tannhäuser
and the Singers’ Contest at
Wartburg Castle], WWV 70
xvii, xxix, 3, 22, 95–7, 99,
101, 103–4, 110–12, 116, 129,
148, 161, 163, 168, 174–5,
178, 181
Tristan und Isolde [Tristan and
Isolde], WWV 90 xvi, xxii,
xxiv, xxviii, xxx, 2, 11, 20, 22,
97, 111, 119, 122–4, 127–8,
133–5, 163, 168, 178–81, 183
Stabreim 150
Symphony in C 94
writings
Das Judenthum in der Musik
[Judaism in Music] 88
Das Kunst der Zukunft [The
Artwork of the Future]
xviii–xix, xxiii, 146
Die Kunst und die Revolution [Art
and Revolution] xviii, 174
Oper und Drama [Opera and
Drama] xx, 14, 16, 21, 159, 180
Warsaw 160–65, 168, 170–74, 176,
178, 181–3
Conservatoire 165, 168, 170–71
Grand Theatre 176, 181–2
Opera 163, 168, 170–72
Philharmonic Orchestra 161
Weber, Carl Maria von xvii, 4, 94, 96,
103, 169
Der Freischütz [The Freeshooter],
Op. 77 96, 103, 169
Weber, Dionys 94
Weingartner, Paul Felix von 37
Wielhorsky, Count Matvey xviii
Wightman, Alistair xxxiv, xxxvi
Wilhelm II, Emperor of Germany 53, 65
Wyspiański, Stanisław xxvi, xxxvi, 137,
141–58, 162, 164
dramas
Akropolis [Acropolis] 144, 151,
155–7
Bolesław Śmiały [Bolesław the
Bold] 148, 151–8
Legenda [Legend] 142, 149–51,
158, 162
Skałka [The Little Rock] 151–5
Wesele [The Wedding] 144
stained glass 140, 142, 144, 151
Bóg Ojciec [God, the Father]
143
Błogosławiona Salomea [Blessed
Salome of Poland] 143
Stań się [Let it be done] 143
Stygmatyzacja św. Franciszka
[St Francis’ stigmata] 143
Yastrebtsev, Vasily Vasil’evich 24–6, 30,
32, 35–7
Zahrádka, Jiří 120, 128
Zelená Hora manuscript 121
Zenkin, Konstantin 73
Zeyer, Julius 119–24, 129
Vyšehrad 121
Žižek, Slavoj xxxi–xxxii, 87–8
Zola, Émile 4