Richard Wagner's Essays on Conducting

Front matter

RICHARD WAGNER'S ESSAYS ON CONDUCTING

A NEW TRANSLATION WITH CRITICAL COMMENTARY aie. u, = {

CHRIS WALTON

Part II. Critical Essay Richard Wagner and the Art of Conducting Wagner in Review

Wagner in the Picture

Annotated Scores and Parts

Writing on Conducting—Mania, Helmsmen, and Theory Berlioz the Catalyst?

Uber das Dirigieren—Early Impact

Uber das Dirigieren—Structure, Context, and Meta-Text Of “Elegance” and Anti-Semitism

Wagner and the Academy xi

XV viii be

CONTENTS

Wagner and Beethoven's Ninth

The Bayreuth Performance of Beethoven’s Ninth in 1872 Finding a Vocabulary for Conducting

Melos and the Body

Tempo Modification

Freedom, Control, and the “Two Cultures”

Charles Darwin and the Imperceptible Art of Transition Wagner ex Cathedra

Wagners School of Capellmeisters

Wagner in Translation

The Triumph of Time

Sound Recordings Annotated Scores Books and Articles

Index

275 275 275 276

5.1

5.2

5.3

5.4

5.5

5.6

5:7

5.8

5.10

5.11

Illustrations

Figures

The interchangeable conductor. Otto Böhler’ silhouettes (clockwise from top left) of Wagner, Hans von Biilow, Edvard

Grieg, and Gustav Mahler. 166 “The Ride of the Valkyries” conducted by Wagner in Vienna in January 1863. 167

Wagner conducting in Vienna on May 10, 1872, drawn by Gustav Gaul. 169

Wagner conducting in Vienna on February 27, 1875, drawn by Gustav Gaul. 169

Henry Holiday, Sketches of Wagner conducting in London in May 1877. 170

Wagner’s wooden baton for conducting the Siegfried Idyll in Tribschen in 1870. 171

“JlIosurpuHp” = “Lohengrin”: Wagner as Lohengrin/Don Quixote, drawn by a duck, not a swan, and with a baton instead of a lance for his battle against windmills. 173

Wagner conducting “the musicians of the future”—an orchestra of toddlers—as depicted by Charles Amédée de Noé (aka Cham) in Le Charivari on February 27, 1860. 174

Jules Renard, “Wagner, generalissimo of the German forces. — They’re counting on his music to put the French to flight.” 175

Wagner, “the musician of the future,” by Henri Meyer, published in Le Sifflet on August 27, 1876. 176

Wagner in 1877, drawn by “Spy” (aka Leslie Ward). 178

5.14

5.18

ILLUSTRATIONS

All traces of Wagner expunged: the Zurich Theater after the fire of New Year's Eve 1889.

Gluck, Overture to Iphigenie in Aulis, mm. 51-82, first violin part copied by Adam Bauer for Wagner’s performances in Zurich on March 7 and 21, 1854, with expression markings as stipulated by Wagner.

Gluck, Overture to [phigenie in Aulis, mm. 62-74. Music example from Wagner's article in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik of July 1, 1854, explaining his interpretation of the work.

Gluck, Overture to Iphigenie in Aulis, mm. 63-69, Heinrich Sczadrowsky’s copy of March 1856, presumably made from Wagner’ personal score (since lost).

Louis Sauter, Wagner conducts Beethoven’s Ninth in the Margravial Opera House in Bayreuth on May 22, 1872.

Double bass part from Adolf Wallnéfer’s score of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, annotated during Wagner’s rehearsals at Bayreuth in 1872, fourth movement, mm. 63-101.

Beethoven, piano reduction of the second movement of his Symphony no. 2 in D major, op. 36, mm. 55-75, as given in Anton Schindler’s biography of 1840.

Acknowledgements

This book is a result of the research project “Annotated Scores” based at the Bern University of the Arts HKB, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), and run in partnership with the Royal Academy of Music in London. I am grateful to the SNSF for both their funding and their uncomplicated organization, and to my colleagues at the HKB for their untiring support, primarily Thomas Gartmann (Head of Research), Martin Skamletz (Head, Institute Interpretation) and (in alphabetical order) Daniel Allenbach, Christine Bolzli, Sabine Jud and Kai Képp. I have profited much from conversations with Christoph Moor, my doctoral student at the project, and with Anselm Gerhard of the University of Bern, Moor’s co-supervisor alongside me. Nicholas Saul and Robert Vilain kindly offered advice on matters of Germanistik relevant to Wagner's reception of contemporary ideas in the sciences and humanities. Barry Millington generously offered to comment on sections of my manuscript, and his astute advice and criticism proved of immense help in the later stages of my work. Peter Jost kindly provided information on Wagner in French translation. If it were not for my longstanding friendship with Raymond Holden AM, professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London, neither the Bernese research project nor this book would have come about; we first discussed annotated conducting scores over twenty years ago when I was head of the Music Division at the Zentralbibliothek Ziirich, and I have since learnt far more from Ray than I could ever acknowledge properly. I also owe thanks to his colleagues at the Royal Academy, Tim Jones and Jonathan Freeman-Attwood—both, I’m delighted to say, contemporaries of mine at Christ Church, Oxford back in the mid-80s—for actively supporting the collaboration between Bern and London. I have also benefitted from Tim’s vast knowledge of Mozart’s music and Mozart scholarship.

The speakers and participants at the two conferences that were part of our research project—at Bern in November 2018 and in London in April 2019—all contributed to the present volume in different ways, either directly or indirectly, and I am grateful to them for sharing their knowledge and expertise: Roger Allen, Regina Busch, Christopher Fifield, David Gleeson, xii § ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Raymond Holden, Henry Kennedy, Malcolm Miller, Christoph Moor, David Patmore, Peter Quantrill, Lena-Lisa Wiistendorfer, and Frits Zwart. Aside from the Bern project, I owe much to my conversations with Thomas Rosner, Artistic Director of the Beethoven Philharmonie in Baden bei Wien. Discussing Wagner (and much else) with Eva Rieger always opens my mind in ways I hadn't before imagined; this book is dedicated to her as a small token of thanks. I am also grateful to the numerous institutions that provided source materials for our project and images for this book: the Nationalarchiv der Richard-Wagner-Stiftung Bayreuth (in particular Sven Friedrich, Kristina Unger and Tanja Dobrick), the British Museum (Elizabeth Bray), the Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz (especially Martina Rebmann and Roland Schmidt-Hensel), the Zentralbibliothek Zürich (Heinrich Aerni, Stefan Dell’Olivo, Urs Fischer, Daniel Gloor, Heidi Kaufmann, and Angelika Salge), the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna (Therese Muxeneder), the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (Thomas Leibnitz, Eike Zimmer, Hans Peter Zimmer and Birgit Suranyi), the Thomas-Mann-Archiv of ETH Zurich (Rolf Bolt), RIPM (Richard Kitson) and the Vera Oeri Library of the Musikhochschule Basel, especially Markus Erni for his inestimable assistance in getting me access to the online RIPM database. The photograph reproduced here of Wagner’s baton was kindly provided by John Keller via its former owner, Hannah Jo Smith, to both of whom I owe my thanks. I am also lucky to reside in a city with a first-rate library, whose staff have over the past years been unfailingly helpful and courteous; I should like to thank Allard Eekman and Ian Holt of the Zentralbibliothek Solothurn and especially its former director, Verena Bider, for their invaluable assistance in my research endeavors. Here I must also thank the composer Urs Joseph Flury, as over the course of many conversations his vast knowledge of the repertoire has been of immense help to me. Markus Kiesel kindly introduced me to the recordings of Nikolai Golovanov, which are a source of delight. The music examples in this book were typeset by Sebastian Meyer in Basel. I also wish to thank Klaus Wallnöfer and his family for generously allowing me to consult the archives of his grandfather.

I must also express my gratitude to the musicians with whom I worked during the years when I was still active in the practical field, especially the singers (in Cambridge and Oxford, then in Zurich, when I worked as a freelance choral accompanist, then later as an occasional répétiteur with members of both the Opera Studio and the main ensemble of the Opera). Like most students of my day at the abovementioned universities, I occasionally took to the podium myself, and circumstances meant I returned to it thereafter on

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS & xiii an ad hoc basis, even as late as my first year as head of the music department at the University of Pretoria in 2001. But I learnt more from being privileged to play under first-rate conductors such as Charles Dutoit, Riccardo Chailly, and others when I was in the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, then later in CUMS in Cambridge. I especially remember Kirill Kondrashin, whose astonishing aura changed my blasé teenage notions about the “charismatic conductor” being supposedly a figment of the Romantic imagination. Perhaps my most vivid memory, however, is of Vernon Handley conducting us in Elgars First Symphony at Cambridge. He missed the actual concert through illness, but his final rehearsal was a masterpiece of musicality, erudition, good humor, and people-management, all of it possible because he simply knew the score inside-out. We also endured the best and the worst of composer-conductors, though they shall remain nameless here. These practical experiences, while now long past, have all helped to inform the present book, and I am grateful for them.

Chris Walton, Törbel and Solothurn, Michaelmas 2020

CWT

ML

SB

SSD tpt trbn

Abbreviations

Editions Cosima Wagner, Die Tagebücher. Edited by Martin Gregor-Dellin and Dietrich Mack. 2 vols. Munich and Zurich: Piper, 1976-77.

Richard Wagner. Mein Leben. Edited by Martin Gregor-Dellin. Munich: List Verlag, 1977.

Richard Wagner: Sämtliche Briefe. 25- vols. Vols. 1-9 edited by Hans-Joachim Bauer, Klaus Burmeister, Johannes Forner, Gertrud Strobel, and Werner Wolf. Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1967-2000. Vols. 10-25 edited by Martin Dürrer, Margret Jestremski, Isabel Kraft, Andreas Mielke, and Angela Steinsiek. Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 2000-.

Richard Wagner. Sämtliche Schriften und Dichtungen. 6th edition (Volksausgabe). 16 vols. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, [1911]. References to Wagner's writings in this book are generally made to this edition, as this has become standard procedure in the Wagner literature. However, I also refer to specific earlier editions of his writings where this is relevant.

Instruments and Voices flute oboe clarinet bassoon horn trumpet trombone xvi tmp vn va vc db wy > wn ce

ABBREVIATIONS timpani violin

viola violoncello double bass piano soprano alto

tenor bass

Author's Note

All translations into English are by the present writer, except where stated otherwise. Richard Wagner originally entitled his conducting essay Über das Dirigiren, the last word of which, after the German spelling reform several ycars later, was consistently spelt Dirigieren. Here the later form is used throughout, as it has become common practice to do so, except when the title is used in quotations.

Introduction

Mr. J. S. DWIGHT, Editor of the Boston Journal of Music (Massachusetts), is entertaining his readers with a somewhat loose translation of that miserable piece of egotistical coxcombry and absolute nonsense, the pamphlet called Ueber das Dirigiren, by Herr Richard Wagner. What, in the name of Music, does any sensible American care about such stuff?

— The Musical World (London), July 2, 1870!

Our friend ... wonders that we waste our time ... Pray do not be alarmed; we never dreamed of undertaking to translate the whole work, or even the larger part of it; that would indeed be a thankless and a dreary task.

—Dwight’s reply to The Musical World in his own journal, July 30, 18707

The initial response to Richard Wagner’s principal essay on conducting, Uber das Dirigieren, published in Germany in 1869-70, was hardly enthusiastic, neither in the German-speaking world nor elsewhere. But within just a few years, Wagner’s ideas on conducting, here so summarily dismissed, came to dominate the discourse in a manner that is arguably unparalleled in the history of musical performance. And while the tortuousness of Wagner's prose makes one sympathize with the above-expressed opinions of the essay in question, no less than three more men (one German-American and two English) would embark on translating it within a quarter-century of its initial publication (though only two of them would complete the task). The story of how Wagner came to write about the art of conducting, and of the reception Uber das Dirigieren and its sister essays were accorded at home and abroad, is told in detail in the second half of this book.

1 Anon.: “Occasional notes,” The Musical World 48/27 (July 2, 1870), 446-8, here 447. 2 [Dwight] (1870): 286.

2 & INTRODUCTION

Wagner committed his principal ideas on conducting to paper over the space of just some eight years in the late 1860s and early 1870s—thus on either side of the centenary year of Ludwig van Beethoven, the composer who loomed largest over Wagner’s project to codify the art of interpretation. The present volume offers the first-ever complete, unexpurgated translations into English of all of Richard Wagner’s writings on conducting since William Ashton Ellis published his multi-volume translation of Wagners prose at the close of the 19th century. Wagner’s texts are presented in chronological order according to their date of completion, so that the reader can trace the development of his ideas. As is explained in the accompanying essay, none of these texts can be properly understood on its own, but only in the wider context of Wagner's prose. In hopes of elucidating that context and of making these texts more readily comprehensible to modern readers, my translations here (unlike those of my Victorian precursors) are annotated extensively, and also quote where necessary from other writings by their author (see, for example, the instance on p. 33 in Uber das Dirigieren where Wagner refers his readers to an earlier essay, assuming that they will take the trouble to look it up; I instead provide the relevant passage from that other essay in a footnote).

The primary aim of this annotated edition of Wagner’s writings is not to document their textual genesis, but to illustrate their impact and reception history. To this end, I have based my translations on the versions that Wagner published in his own edition of his collected writings in the 1870s (which was in any case the venue for the first publication of Wagners report on conducting Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Dresden and his reminiscences of Spontini, both of which he had extracted from his autobiography Mein Leben). Wagner does touch elsewhere on issues pertaining to conducting (for a discussion of these texts, see the section “Writing on Conducting—Mania, Helmsmen, and Theory’ in part II), but the essays in the present volume encompass his most important statements on the art. Only in the case of his essay on Spontini have I refrained from offering the whole text, since much of this essay deals with anecdotal, biographical matters of no direct bearing on our topic.

In line with my endeavor to document the impact of these writings, my footnotes also refer on numerous occasions to texts on conducting by later authors who drew upon Wagner’s ideas (often unacknowledged, sometimes to the point of plagiarism). I also occasionally refer to specific recordings when a later conductor has seemingly followed Wagner’s instructions for a particular work, even when those instructions were themselves based on a misunderstanding (such as Wagner's erroneous diminuendo towards the close

INTRODUCTION S® 3 of Weber’s Freischütz Overture, which was kept by some conductors, but repudiated by others, as explained in footnote 84 in chapter 3 below). For reasons of space, these references to recordings are not comprehensive; I offer them only when they seem particularly pertinent to the topic at hand.

A Note on the Present Translation

‘The essays in this volume have all been translated more than once since they were first published in German in the late 1860s and early 1870s. The abovementioned William Ashton Ellis translated all our texts as part of his larger Wagner project, while his translation of Uber das Dirigieren had already been preceded by that of Edward Dannreuther and by piecemeal versions by two other men. The most recent translations of Uber das Dirigieren and of the 1873 essay on conducting Beethoven's Ninth are by Robert L. Jacobs. Since two of the texts in this volume were extracted by Wagner from his memoir Mein Leben, the original passages are also found in English translation in the first, anonymous translation of 1911 and in Andrew Gray’s more recent English edition of that work.? The bibliography below offers more details on the different editions and translations that have been published.

As explained in my accompanying essay, Wagner’s own obsession with achieving “clarity” seems to have been inversely proportional to his ability to achieve it in his prose. Like several of my predecessors, I too have resorted to paraphrasing Wagner where this seemed necessary to achieve some inkling of the clarity to which he claimed to aspire, though I have endeavored to remain as faithful as possible to what I believe is the content of the original (this excuse, perhaps ironically, is not unlike Wagner’s own when explaining his alterations to Beethoven; see p. 131 on Wagner’s efforts to realize his predecessor’s “true intentions”). For example, if Wagner writes of something stretching almost to the point of impossibility, I prefer instead to simplify and say that it is “almost impossible.” One might justifiably claim that such acts of clarification and simplification constitute a falsification. The more Wagner's bile rises as he writes of enemies real and imagined, the more his prose ties itself in knots. If we untie them all, then we risk making the odious seem palatable. Wagner’s insistence on stringing together negatives, for example, can offer a fascinating window onto his own insecurities and his need to create adversaries and barriers to be overcome in the (to him)

3 See Wagner, trans. Anon. (1911) and Wagner, trans. Gray (1983).

4 & INTRODUCTION inevitable, ultimate victory of his art. But reducing their number can also help to unclutter his style without doing undue violence to his content (for example, my translation of Über das Dirigieren has reduced instances of the word “not”— “nicht”—to about a quarter compared to the original German). I have preferred to err on the side of simplicity; those who delight for whatever reason in the complex side of Wagner will still find enough of him here. One area in which I have had to add, instead of take away, is indirect speech. German uses the subjunctive for this, but in English one has to add “they said” or the like to convey the correct meaning. I have generally retained Wagners use of emphasis. He does this by using different fonts or spacings; all such instances are given here in italics, which I also use for work titles etc., as is the common practice today. I have also kept Wagner’s habit of preceding a new thought with a dash, and adhered to his paragraph divisions except in one or two cases where he digresses from his topic within a particularly long paragraph, and starting a new paragraph seemed to the benefit of his text (these instances are few and are not otherwise indicated).

Each new translator owes a debt to those who have gone before him (as Jacobs also freely admitted).4 The same naturally applies to me. However, I took care to consult my direct predecessors only after having made my first draft, both to avoid undue influence and in an effort to ensure that I did not plagiarize them, however unintentionally. There were occasions when they proved a real boon, and I am indebted to them all in many ways. If upon consulting them, I found that they had here or there chosen a word more fitting to the context than my own, I adopted it without comment (I believe it would be absurd to provide footnotes for individual words that are themselves in common currency). It also happened that on consulting my predecessors about a particularly convoluted passage, I found that they had either paraphrased heavily to avoid the problem (in which I wholeheartedly sympathize), or had each alighted on a very different solution—almost as if we had all been translating quite different source texts. On other occasions, I found that my chosen wording was remarkably close to one or other of them—such as in Wagner’s description, late in Uber das Dirigieren, of the talented young conductors whose fate is that of the “heretics of old.” It is also possible that some phrases might have stuck in my mind after earlier perusals of the translations in question (Ashton Ellis in particular has been a staple of English-speaking students for many years, and I consulted him often at university, nearly forty years ago). But some stock turns of phrase will also

4 Wagner, trans. Jacobs (1979): vii.

INTRODUCTION &® 5 suggest themselves to any translator in the present context. I was amused to find, after having already translated a particular passage, that “Kraut und Rüben” (literally: cabbage and turnips) was already considered equivalent to “higgledy-piggledy” in Ashton Ellis’s day. So if the observant reader finds unacknowledged similarities between my offerings and those of my predecessors, my excuse is one whose wording I shamelessly pilfer from Heinrich Böll: these are neither intentional nor accidental, but unavoidable.’

I have also benefitted from the work of recent Wagner translators who have worked on texts other than those I offer here. Roger Allen’s translation of Beethoven® is a model of its kind, while reading any translation by Stewart Spencer leaves me astonished at his linguistic virtuosity and clarity, and wishing that I possessed either. Any errors or misunderstandings in the present translations are naturally the fault of the present writer alone.

While I was working on this book, Egon Voss published an excellent new edition of the original German text of Uber das Dirigieren.’ I only read Voss when I was already deep into my own work on the present volume, and in fact our approach is very different (Voss’s is a critical edition that details the genesis of that text and its assorted versions, whereas the present book is focused on the context and reception of Wagner’s several writings on the art of conducting). I did find that some of Voss’s annotations coincided with what I needed to add here in order to make Wagner more easily comprehensible, and there are inevitable overlaps (mostly where we each felt a need to identify historical figures with dates of birth and death and a designation of their professional function). While I did not read Voss’s annotations until I had made my own, I have acknowledged his precedence in my footnotes whenever we offer similar solutions. I am also grateful to Voss—a colleague of over twenty years’ standing with a knowledge of Wagner far surpassing my own—for kindly providing me with information on numerous issues, and for taking the time to meet and discuss Wagner (and much else) more than once during my work on this volume.

6 Wagner, trans. Allen (2014).

6 &® INTRODUCTION Music Examples

As explained in my accompanying essay, Wagner’s music examples are oddly cursory and abrupt (they often end at a bar line in the middle of a phrase, without regard for the musical flow). When Robert L. Jacobs made his abridged translation of Wagner’s writings on conducting in 1979, he considerably expanded the original examples (though without specifying his changes in each case).® I have retained Wagners examples wherever possible, abruptness and all, though I have had to concur with Jacobs on occasions where expansion seemed a prerequisite for ensuring comprehension on the part of the reader. I have also occasionally adjusted the order in which these examples occur in the text, so as to keep to a clear musical chronology (Wagner sometimes jumps back and forth in a score). In each case where I have amended the substance or the placing of the original example, this is specified in a footnote. Two things have been changed without comment, however: C clefs have been replaced by treble and bass clefs (except for viola parts), and all transposing instruments are here given in C. Wagner occasionally gives a reference for his source, though merely by pointing the reader to the relevant page in the scores published by Breitkopf & Hartel. I here give measure numbers throughout instead.

8 Wagner, trans. Jacobs (1979).

Part I

Richard Wagners Writings on Conducting

1 2

Chapter One Reminiscences of Spontini

Gaspare Spontini (1774-1851) was one of the most celebrated opera composers of his time. He studied in Naples, then in 1803 moved to Paris where he enjoyed the patronage of the Empress Joséphine. His opera La vestale, first performed at the Paris Opera in 1807, brought him international fame and was admired and imitated by many others. In 1820 he was made the director of the Berlin Opera on the invitation of King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia, where he played a major part in consolidating the importance of the conductor at roughly the same time that Weber was exerting a similar influence from the podium at the Court Opera in Dresden. Spontini remained in Berlin for twenty years, by which time his star had waned, and he was finally released from his duties in 1841. Of all his operatic forbears, Spontini was one of those whom Wagner most admired. He almost certainly met Spontini in Berlin in 1836, and eight years later, having himself assumed a position of power in the operatic world, he was able to invite Spontini to conduct his masterpiece La vestale in Dresden. As was typical of Wagner, his published praise of the man and his work was generally tempered by criticism either explicit or implicit,! and the expressions of admiration for the “immortal” composer in his later correspondence with the man’s family are not without ulterior motive (Spontini’s wife was the sister of the piano manufacturer Erard, whose widow gifted Wagner a lovely new grand piano). Nevertheless, a genuine admiration and affection for the man and his work seems to shine through all the ifs and buts of his essays and the flowery clichés of his correspondence.”

Wagners essay on Spontini is a mash-up made in 1872 of two earlier texts. It begins with a slightly truncated version of the obituary that Wagner had published in the Eidgenössische Zeitung in Zurich on February 11, 1851, just over a fortnight after Spontini’s death on January 24 (Wagner’s admiration for the man was made further apparent when he included the overture to Spontini’s

See, for example, his discussion of Spontini in Opera and Drama, SSD 3: 240.

See Wagner’s letter to Camille Erard of February 15, 1858, in SB 9: 193-94. His Erard piano is held today by the Wagner Museum in Tribschen, Lucerne.

10 & REMINISCENCES OF SPONTINI

3 4 opera La vestale in his next concert with the Zurich orchestra on February 25, 1851). Ihe second, anecdotal part of this essay, about Spontini in Dresden, dates from roughly 1866 and was extracted from Mein Leben, Wagner's last and biggest autobiography. The resultant text, now entitled simply “Reminiscences of Spontini,” was published in the fifth volume of Wagners collected writings in the summer of 1872, amidst reprints of smaller essays from the 1850s and the libretto to Das Rheingold. Wagner dealt in similar fashion with his report on conducting Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Dresden in 1846, which was also taken from Mein Leben, but similarly coupled with a much earlier text and placed in the second volume of his collected writings, alongside essays actually written in the 1840s and the libretto to Lohengrin. The second volume of Mein Leben, containing the original versions of his recollections of Spontini in Dresden and of performing Beethoven's Ninth in that city, was published in late 1872 in a limited private edition; the full text of this autobiography would not be made publicly available for another nine decades.

Anno Mungen revealed several years ago how Wagner’s reminiscences of Spontini play fast and loose with the truth, being clearly couched with a view to a neat dramatic trajectory that enhances Wagner’s reputation at the cost of Spontini’s.> To give one such example: Wagner writes how Spontini insisted in advance that he would expect “le tout garni de douze bonnes contre-basses” (the full complement of 12 good double basses) for his performance, the financial consequences of which—thus Wagner—caused such horror among the management of the Dresden opera house that they tried to rescind their invitation as tactfully as possible. Spontini nevertheless turned up for the dress rehearsal, and all proceeded swimmingly since Wagner the supreme diplomat was at hand to solve any problems. In fact, Spontini had only asked for six or seven double basses, and Wagner had offered five; the rest was Wagner’s invention. Our purpose here, however, is not to tease out fact from fiction, but to observe Wagner's descriptions of Spontini as a conductor and of the changes to the orchestral set-up that supposedly resulted from the latter’s visit to Dresden. As Mungen points out, Wagner deals in cavalier fashion with who was responsible for what innovations. But the very fact that “Spontini” is here a kind of Wagnerian construct (at times almost the dummy to Wagner’s ventriloquist) means that we get a clear idea of what Wagner wanted from his orchestra—or at least, what Wagner in circa 1866 imagined that his earlier self must have wanted, or should have wanted. In fact, the blending of orchestral timbres that Wagner says here was his goal in 1844 was more relevant to the Wagner who composed his Prelude to Lohengrin a few years later.

Unlike the other texts translated in this volume, I here include only those passages that deal directly with our topic—conducting—and have excised the largely anecdotal sections.

REMINISCENCES OF SPONTINI §&® |l

[...] When I asked [Gaspare Spontini] to conduct the next day’s rehearsal himself [in late 1844], he suddenly became very apprehensive, apparently in contemplation of the various difficulties that might present themselves. But in his highly flustered state he did not give any clear opinion about anything, so it became difficult to ask him what I might do to induce him to direct the rehearsal. After pondering for a while, he asked me what kind of baton we conducted with. I used my hands to explain the rough size and thickness of our average baton, which was made of normal wood, covered in white paper, and was always served up fresh to us by the orchestra attendant. He sighed and asked if I thought it might be possible by tomorrow to have a baton of black ebony made for him, of very considerable length and thickness (which he now explained using his arm and open hand), and at both ends of which a rather large white knob of ivory should be affixed. I promised both to procure him an instrument very similar to this for the next rehearsal, and that I would arrange for another to be made, of the required materials and to his complete specifications, in time for the performance itself. Noticeably reassured, he wiped his brow and told me I could announce that he would direct the next day’s rehearsal. After insisting on describing his requirements for his baton once more, he travelled to his hotel.