Cosima Wagner

“ In the face of a personality so superhuman as Richard Wagner's, the prejudices and even the laws of men cannot prevail. Who would not feel the fascination and submit joyfully to the supremacy of such a genius? In Cosima's place, you would do as she does, and it is your duty as a father not to put any obstacle in the way of the realization of the great event to which she has the right to look forward. ”

“ For there he had been able to work in perfect seclusion, under the protection and forethought of the devoted Cosima. His new villa at Bayreuth he called "Wahnfried," setting over the door a fresco of mythological figures, symbolising music and tragedy; in whom are portrayed Cosima Wagner, his final ideal, and Wilhelmine Schroeder-Devrient, who had been his first inspiration, and also figures of Wotan and Siegfried; the former being the portrait of Franz Betz, the singer of the rôle, and the latter being the child Siegfried Wagner. ”

“ Madam Cosima signed to me not to say anything more, and as soon as it was possible, she told me all about it.
"It is a photograph of Schnorr von Karolsfeld, 'the hero of song,' as Wagner called him—suddenly cut off by Death in the very fulness of triumphant life. Five years have passed since then, but the Master cannot console himself for the loss of this friend, this disciple, this marvellous interpreter of his work. He never thinks of him without a pang and, above all, he dreads to speak of him." ”

“ Hans seemed to have felt it his duty to join me in celebrating Weisheimer's debut, his contribution being a new pianoforte concerto by Liszt. To enter the old familiar hall of the Gewandhaus at Leipzig was enough in itself to cause me an uneasy feeling of depression, which was increased by my reception by the members of the orchestra—of whose estrangement I was keenly conscious—and to whom I had to introduce myself as an entire stranger. But I felt myself suddenly transported when I discovered Cosima sitting in a corner of the hall, in deep mourning and very pale, but smiling cheerfully at me. ”

“ Richter who had been at Tribschen for several days, had undoubtedly heard us arrive. He slipped into the drawing-room almost furtively, and saluted us with a restrained affection. In Wagner's presence, he always seemed ecstatic and overwhelmed. Cosima assured me that he had been so since his arrival. "One can hardly make him speak. He stays out of sight, for fear of being in the way, renders all sorts of services, goes to bathe the dogs, and, when he is present he stands off in a corner, where he listens and admires. ”

“ What Cosima was to Wagner is best told in Liszt's words, written to a friend after a visit to Bayreuth, in 1872, when his favorite child had been married to Wagner two years. "Cosima still is my terrible daughter, as I used to call her,—an extraordinary woman and of the highest merit, far above vulgar judgment, and worthy of the admiring sentiments which she has inspired in all who have known her. She is devoted to Wagner with an all-absorbing enthusiasm, like Senta to the Flying Dutchman—and she will prove his salvation, because he listens to her and follows her with keen perception." ”

“ Autograph of Hans von Bülow
"Bülow," I said, "you will excuse me if I touch on a rather delicate subject. Of course your friends abroad know just what your present attitude is toward Wagner; but over here we know little or nothing about it. Perhaps you would like to enlighten me. I hope, however, I have not touched on a painful subject."
"Not at all," he exclaimed. "What happened was the most natural thing in the world. You know what a wonderful woman Cosima is—such intellect, such energy, such ambition, which she naturally inherits from her father. ”

“ No woman not a professional musician has ever played so important a part in musical history as "Frau Cosima," the widow of Richard Wagner. In fact, has any woman, professional musician or not? Bear in mind who "Frau Cosima" is. She is the daughter of Franz Liszt, the greatest pianist and one of the great composers of the last century, and was the wife and, in the most exalted meaning of the term, the helpmeet of the greatest of all composers! The two men with whom Cosima has thus stood in such intimate relation are exceptional even among great musicians. ”

“ In a letter written by Wagner in June, 1864, occurs this significant sentence: "There is one good being who brightens my household." The "good being" was Cosima, who from now on was destined to fill his life with the sunshine of love and of devotion to his art. ”

“ Only rather a bore!" said Cosima, after reading it. "Two elderly people, named Schott, husband and wife, announce that they will visit us this evening after supper. They are very worthy people, but he, at one time, did Wagner a serious wrong, and Wagner, without exactly holding resentment, yet has not been able to forget. Moreover, these good people are very narrow and stiff, not at all talkative: we shall not know what to do, it will be dull, and all our pleasant, sympathetic atmosphere will be disturbed." ”

“ So Richard and Minna drifted apart, and Bülow and Cosima drifted apart, and in the end Richard and Cosima drifted together. The censures that still are passed at times on their conduct are hypocritical and grotesque. The people who pass them are usually people who think that the Ten Commandments were made only to be observed by the poorer classes, or by other people, not themselves, and are willing enough to excuse offences against the marriage laws when they are committed by folks of exalted social position. The whole truth about the Richard-Cosima affair will evidently never be known ”

“ We also had a good deal of music together, as in Billow I had at last found the right man to play Klindworth's atrocious arrangement of my Nibelungen scores. But the two acts of Siegfried, which had only been written down as rough drafts, were mastered by Hans with such consummate skill that he could play them as if they had really been arranged for the piano. As usual, I took all the singing parts; sometimes we had a few listeners, amongst whom Mme. Wille was the most promising. Cosima listened silently with her head bowed; if pressed for an expression of opinion, she began to cry. ”

“ There was the 377 silence of deep devotion; the presence of the worshipers, fanatics in the great majority; the expectation of marvelous scenes to come as the wailing first phrase rose from the unseen orchestra. Put this prelude in the conventional opera house, or in the concert hall, and it cannot be ranked with Wagner’s greatest works.
The prelude to Parsifal was composed at Bayreuth in September, 1877. The first performance was a private one in the hall of the Villa Wahnfried at Bayreuth, on December 25, 1878, to celebrate the birthday of Cosima Wagner. ”

“ On the whole the performances are better than elsewhere, but, excepting in the orchestra, there are many shortcomings, and the fashionable audience from Paris, and other capitals of Europe and America, is far indeed from what was contemplated by Wagner. All honour is due to Madame Cosima Wagner, who has worked unflinchingly against immense difficulties to maintain the honour of her husband's heritage. She is not to blame if she has not fully achieved the impossible; If the tree has partly withered, the fault is not with the gardener ”

“ What a contrast Cosima must have seemed to poor Minna who, in the same house and but a short time before, had desecrated the manuscript of "Die Meistersinger" by allowing a bread-ball to roll over it! Wagner's favorable opinion of Hans and Cosima underwent a great change during their sojourn with him. In a letter, after speaking of Von Bülow's depression owing to poor health, he writes: "Add to this a tragic marriage; a young woman of extraordinary, quite unprecedented, endowment, Liszt's wonderful image, but of superior intellect." ”

“ It is to dispose their minds in such sort that the productions of genius will be assured, not of the understanding of all, for that cannot be, but of the respect of all.
As in the preceding years, Richard and Cosima Wagner invited him to spend Christmas at Triebschen. He excused himself; the work of his lectures occupied all his time. He offered Cosima Wagner, by way of homage, a musical fantasy on Saint Sylvester's Night, composed some weeks earlier. "I am very impatient to know what they will think of it down there," he wrote to Rohde. "I have never been criticised by any competent person." ”

“ The old man fell under many influences, some of them sinister. He seldom saw Richard or Cosima Wagner, though he attended the opening of Bayreuth in 1876. On that occasion Wagner publicly paid a magnificent tribute to the genius and noble friendship of Liszt. ”

“ It is absolutely necessary that you should paint the portrait of Richard Wagner, it is a disgrace to Germany that no artist of worth has yet attempted it. Madame Cosima sends the order to you, and leaves you free to fix your own price. ”

“ On Thursday, the 25th of August, 1870, in the Protestant Church of Lucerne, in the presence of two witnesses, one, the lifelong friend of the Wagner family, Hans Richter, the other, Miss M.v.M., the wedding of Richard Wagner to Cosima, the divorced wife of Hans von Bülow, was celebrated.
"There is no other union which Germans ought to deem more holy. None have ever been entered into with less selfishness, with higher impersonal sentiments. ”

“ In a letter dated June 25, 1870, Wagner wrote of his wife Cosima, “She has defied every disapprobation and taken upon herself every condemnation. She has borne to me a wonderfully beautiful boy, whom I call boldly Siegfried; he is now growing, together with my work [he was working then on the opera Siegfried; hence the name] ; he gives me a new long life, which at last has attained a meaning. Thus we get along without the world, from which we have wholly withdrawn.”
The composer wrote the music of the Idyl—originally called the Triebschen Idyl—as a birthday gift for his wife. ”

“ And now the stage was clear for the last act of the drama in which he and Cosima were the principal actors. As the autobiography ends with the summons to Munich by King Ludwig, we are henceforth without any guidance from Wagner himself. We can imagine, however, that for a man of his temperament the necessity for feminine companionship soon became urgent. Minna was now out of the question; his other flames—Mathilde Wesendonck, Friederike Meyer, Mathilde Maier, Henriette von Bissing—had one by one died out. ”

“ We tried to console ourselves with the reflection that a similar infliction could never again fall to our lot. The following day, while I was preparing for my departure, and brooding over other sources of dissatisfaction at my position, Cosima induced Hans to continue the journey as far as Worms in the hope of finding something refreshing and cheering in a visit to the ancient cathedral there, and from that place they followed me later to Biebrich. ”

“ That Bayreuth with Wagner's death did not become a mere tradition, that the Wagner performances still continue there, is due to Frau Cosima. She is Bayreuth. No woman has made such an impression on the music of her time as she. Yet she is not a musician! ”

“ What embryonic works Wagner left is not known. He had written an extensive autobiography, but his family has not yet seen fit to publish it. Probably it will not see the light till Cosima is laid beside him in the garden of Wahnfried. The rumour that he left sketches for a drama on a Buddhistic subject rests on slight foundation. The materials for this drama, "The Victors," were absorbed in the plan of "Parsifal." ”

“ It is not very flattering for a young man, but it is absolutely true." Yet, a year later, he married Cosima, one of the girls whose "superiority" so annoyed him.
How strange, in view of what happened later, that Von Bülow so planned his wedding trip that its main objective was a visit to Zurich in order that he might present Cosima to Wagner, who had not seen her since she had formed one of his audience at the "Rheingold" reading in Paris. ”

“ The day for parting was drawing near for us all, after a week of very varied and exciting experiences. A happy chance enabled me to make the greater part of my prearranged journey to Vienna in the company of Blandine and Ollivier, who had decided to visit Cosima at Reichenhall, where she was staying for a 'cure.' As we were all saying good-bye to Liszt on the railway platform, we thought of Bulow, who had distinguished himself so remarkably in the past few days. ”

“ No matter the mood in which I found Wagner, it was always the old Wagner. Did we set out for a stroll, he would take me into some wayside inn, there to eat sausages and drink beer. I must add that his drinking was of the most moderate description. It was during one of these rambles that we spoke of Liszt, and in the talking, he told me that Liszt had been more pained at his daughter Cosima’s change of religion from Roman Catholic to Protestant, than at her divorce from von Bülow. ”

“ What joy to know and to return! to leap from the boat to the landing with its familiar little shed! to see again with our real eyes, the garden, the house, the lovely verdure, the air so blue....
Servais, who saw it all for the first time, was deeply moved. Villiers exulted.
I ran across the lawn, to be the first to arrive, Russ discovered us, he bounded forward, recognised me and greeted me with loud barks.
Then the children ran with cries of delight. In the salon, the sound of the piano, which I had heard, suddenly ceased. Wagner appeared at the top of the steps and Cosima followed him. ”