The singers are what's most important !
Toward a historical and critical performance practice of the works of Richard Wagner
Author: Egon Voss
Score
The basis for the performance of a work written for the musical theater is the score. This sounds banal, but in practice, however, it is often the case that performers do not rely on the score. Singers rehearse their parts from keyboard excerpts, and orchestral musicians play from orchestral parts. One would expect all this performance material to match the score but anyone who has ever experienced Wagner rehearsals knows this is not the case. Wagner usually published the libretti of his operas separately from the score, and from the Ring onward even well before the score was finished. Consequently, they contain variants, which are not found in the final composed version. Consequently, there are two text traditions, that of the libretto and that of the score. In the past, both were used interchangeably, and usually the libretto version was used on the basis of its fixation in the Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen of 1871-73. Since this was possible only in those places where the verse measure and musical rhythm corresponded, the result - apart from the fact that this was something intolerable - could not be other than an ugly compromise. In this way, however, different readings of the libretti ended up in the scores as well as in the keyboard excerpts used until today. The latter is largely due to the fact, that Wagner did not care about the realization of the keyboard excerpts. This allowed conductors such as Felix Mottl to have things seeped into those keyboard excerpts that, in their view, constituted the correct version.
Scores are often reprinted and thereby subjected to revision or even newly published as orchestral parts, which means that as a rule these parts do not conform to the score. Those who wish to be precise should therefore compare the material of the parts with the score used before the beginning of each production. The same effort should also be made in connection with the keyboard excerpts. This is especially necessary when the scores are based on the critical complete edition Richard Wagner-Sämtliche Werke (Mainz 1970). That one should use these today as a basis should be a sine qua non. Better, however, is to throw away the old orchestral parts and acquire new ones that correspond to the critical edition. But as is well known, orchestral musicians fiercely resist the use of new materials. This leads to the impossible situation, where the conductor conducts from a modern score, the orchestra plays from old orchestral parts and the singers rehearse their roles from old keyboard excerpts.
Even before the release of the critical edition, fidelity to the score text was a rule of thumb in the performances, at least musically. In their attempt to ascertain Wagner's intentions as precisely as possible, the compilers of this critical edition have sought the greatest possible authenticity, hoping to see Wagner's intentions likewise realized in the performances of his works. In that sense, this edition provides the most faithful score text possible. Moreover, by extensively documenting the performance tradition, it provides extensive data and facts about the circumstances and conditions of the works' performance. The attentive reader of the appendices, critical messages and documentation, which can be found in this edition, will in this way also receive specific indications of those parameters of the composition, which are only relatively and not absolutely recorded in the score. These include tempo, dynamics and articulation.
Tempi
Already during the first rehearsals for the Ring in Bayreuth in 1876, Wagner clarified how to interpret the tempi in Das Rheingold when he stated that nowhere in Rheingold do very slow tempi occur. Many of Wagner's indications look like tempo instructions but are rather characterizations of expression. This is true, for example, of the regularly occurring indication breit, which is too often used to justify a slow tempo. Whenever Wagner did indeed have a tempo indication in mind with indications like these, he usually made this clear, as e.g. in the first act of Tristan (bar 1888), where Wagner noted etwas breiter im Zeitmass, or in the third act (bar 365) immer mehr belebend (auch im Zeitmass). This shows convincingly that belebend is not a tempo indication. The sum of the many surviving testimonies of Wagner himself, give the impression that he predominantly wanted faster tempi than what later, especially through performance practice in Bayreuth, became the custom.
Dynamics
Anyone who studies Wagner's scores carefully will notice that when the voice is introduced, the orchestra's volume is usually reduced. This is in accordance with the rule of thumb, which originated in Bayreuth during the rehearsals of 1876 and 1882, where the orchestra always had to put itself at the service of the singers. During one of the rehearsals of Götterdämmerung in 1876, Wagner even remarked, "The singers are most important. The orchestra merely accompanies". On the other hand, the leader of the rehearsals appointed by Wagner at the time, Heinrich Porges, also made mention of many passages, where the reduction of the orchestral sound appears necessary, and a fortissimo is replaced by a forte, a forte by a mezzo-forte, etc. Similar dynamic reductions were introduced as early as the Munich premiere of Tristan anno 1865. Even though these kinds of adjustments and/or comments are usually found only in secondary or even tertiary sources, they are included in the critical edition.
Still, all too often today one finds that the singers are overplayed by the orchestra. It is not so much the literal dynamic indication of the score that is decisive, but the relationship to the singer. It is the clarity of the text recited by the singers that must prevail. Consequently, the conductor - at least as far as the loudness of the orchestra is concerned - must conform to the possibilities of the singer. With regard to the universally heard complaint that there are no more competent Wagner singers to be found, it should therefore be noted that it is not so much a lack of competent singers as of conductors with the right attitude and insight.
Wagner himself admitted that he sometimes orchestrated too "strong" or too "thick." In order not to have to constantly rework his scores, he braced himself, on the one hand, with the sound dampening sound cover, which he had installed in the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth, and, on the other hand, with the authorization of instrumental retouches, which, however, are by no means to be regarded as a licence for arbitrary instrumentation changes.
In Parsifal, Wagner preferred boys' voices for the choruses from the dome. At the premiere, the work was also performed along these lines. However, it had taken a great deal of effort to recruit a suitable boys' chorus for Bayreuth. Even if at first glance it seems more practical to replace boys' voices with women's voices, it is incomprehensible that - since the major opera houses today have basically no trouble finding a competent boys' chorus - Wagner's intention in this regard continues to be ignored. After all, boys' voices are sonically as well as semantically intrinsically more harmonious.
Something similar occurs with the forest bird in Siegfried, where the score also prescribes a boy's voice. Even though Wagner used a female voice for the forest bird at the premiere in 1876, this does not mean that the practice was fixed forever. After all, Wagner never altered the score in this respect, and nowhere is there any known testimony that demonstrates a fundamental change of opinion on Wagner's part in this regard. So one should at least try to use boys' voices.
Vibrato
The performance practice at the time of Wagner envisioned the vibrato of the string instruments - which today belongs to the normal practice - only in certain places. The fact that Wagner occasionally explicitly prescribed vibrato clearly shows that he considered it rather a special means of expression or articulation. Thus, for the desired effect to occur, it must be unconditionally omitted elsewhere. This generally results in a drier and stiffer sound with a lower carrying capacity and volume, which contradicts the current sound ideal of fullness and euphony. Abandoning generalized vibrato paves the way for a historical Wagner performance practice.
Orchestra instrumentation
These problems of a dynamic nature are somewhat mitigated when one considers that at Wagner's time the stringed instruments were strung with gut strings, while the flutes were still mainly made of wood. Moreover, Wagner had a distinct preference for conical flutes, as he knew them from the Dresden Hofkapelle. He called the cylindrical instruments aggressive Gewaltsröhren. The sound volume of the wind instruments - based, among other things, on their different size ratios - must have sounded much softer with Wagner, at least compared to today.
Wagner's demand for a larger string section in the Ring is probably due to the fact that he could not achieve the required fullness and brilliance with instruments strung with gut strings that he had in mind. One must therefore dare to ask the question whether the present line-up with modern string instruments should still be taken literally; in other words, whether it is not rather an overstaffing in terms of strings today.
The same applies with regard to the replacement of the English horn by the alto oboe. In the first edition of the score of Siegfried from 1876 it appears that the English horn did not meet Wagner's expectations because of its weak sound. He therefore had a special alto oboe built to replace it, which from now on should replace the English horn in all his scores. Wagner also chose the alto oboe in Parsifal.
Wagner also provided an alternative for the string instruments of the middle register. Perhaps the usual violas, like the English horn, did not please him either, and he had them replaced by so-called viola alta, which he simply called Altgeigen. Whether his intention to include six such Altgeigen in the Ring of 1876 was realized cannot be determined with certainty. What is certain, however, is that violas of this type, also known as Ritter-Bratschen, were used for Parsifal at the 1882 Festival. This shows that Wagner was constantly looking for new sounds. In order to do justice to Wagner's intentions, it therefore seems to us not unattractive to experiment once again with this type of instrument.
In order to find out Wagner's sound intentions, it would also be desirable for certain parts to check the original tuning of the horn and trumpets. This implies no longer playing all wind parts continuously with valve instruments of the same tuning. Horns in D and trumpets in E-flat possess a totally different sound quality, which should not be withheld from the listener if Wagner's scores are to be fully realized.
The dictates of the score
Fidelity to the work prohibits any form of interference with the score, be it changes in dynamics or retouches in instrumentation. However, it is too easily forgotten - and this is even more the case in musical theater than in the other musical genres - that the score performed in musical theater is subordinate to the play that is to have its realization on stage. Richard Wagner, of all people, was a defender of this view. Thus, the score can neither replace nor anticipate the performance. It is only a guideline, which is not prepared for all eventualities and must therefore be flexible, apart from the fact that musical notation, can never achieve the completeness and precision of literary works, for example. This implies, that the literal interpretation of the score guidelines do not guarantee the realization of the intentions of the work. Perhaps by changing the letter of the score - as Wagner himself did - one comes a step closer. For example, during the Vienna rehearsals of Tristan und Isolde (1861-1863), Wagner deliberately adapted the parts of the protagonists to the vocal capabilities of the performers, using punctation - a common 19th-century method. These adaptations are, to the best of our knowledge, found in the critical edition of Tristan. They could set an example for performances today, in which the realization of the technical demands of the vocal score too often gets in the way of the substantive shaping of the role.
In 1854, for example, Wagner wrote to the conductor Gustav Schmidt in Frankfurt informing him that if he did not have sufficient chorus members and space at his disposal to occupy the ghost scene in the third act of Der fliegende Holländer, he would do better to opt for a number of vigorously declamatory singers, whereby he had to be absolutely careful that the crew of the ghost ship, rather than falling into a kind of unintelligible humming, should allow the wild text to come into its own clearly and intelligibly in unison. Apparently, Wagner felt, that the substance of his work should not necessarily conform to the literal notation of the score. Therefore, he was always willing to make changes to the score - at least as far as they benefited the performance - and did not affect the content of the whole.
Abbreviations and additions
Another intervention in the score is the omission or abbreviation. Unlike most other scenic works, where abbreviations in the score are commonplace, Wagner's works, on the contrary, seem to be immune to this intervention. Following the practice common in his time, Wagner himself often made abbreviations. On the other hand, he also often endeavored to have the work brought to performance unabridged. This is the legitimate aspiration of any composer, which of course must be respected. That this goal was achieved is not least to the credit of the Bayreuther Festspiele, which did not allow any abridgment, making this practice - even outside Bayreuth - the rule. Yet the question arises as to whether Wagner himself would have taken such a principled stand in this case. In addition, one wonders whether the avoidance of any shortening does not lead to rigidity in the long run, and has only partly something to do with the performance reliability of the work as well as the liveliness of the theater, since Wagner always had the vitality of the theater and by no means the external realization of the score in mind.
There is a great deal of evidence of this, such as in the already mentioned letter to Gustav Schmidt, as well as in another letter to Johann Baptist Hagen in Wiesbaden (1854), in which Wagner prefers a shortening rather than a missed build-up of tension. Nothing is more dreadful to Wagner than a tedious performance. Already at the creation of the Holländer in Dresden in 1843, the first stanza of the male chorus Schwarzer Hauptmann geh ans Land was completely deleted, which Wagner also mentioned in his handwritten score (bars 501-528). This strengthens the suspicion, that Wagner perhaps played with the idea of permanently retaining this intervention. Presumably, therefore, this shortening was also implemented at the 1844 Berlin and 1864 Munich performances.
Put negatively, the maxim is that there is no need to shorten only if the dramatic-theatrical sense of what is notated in the score is fulfilled.
The permissibility of the abridgment is not limited only to Wagner's earlier works, and has nothing to do with the later musical-dramatic aesthetics, nor with the fact, that the later works can be technically more easily abridged. After his experience with the performances of the Ring of 1876 in Bayreuth and of 1878 in Leipzig - which admittedly were not conducted by himself - Wagner, according to Cosima's diary entry of 12. 7.1878, came to the decision to delete in the Götterdämmerung the Norns scene almost completely and large parts of the scene between Waltraute and Brünnhilde, because - according to Cosima - he realized, that when these scenes are not fully realized, they remain largely unintelligible to the audience. But whether Wagner did indeed make these deletions, we don't know.
In fact, Wagner rarely renounced his ground rules. Although he wanted to see Tannhäuser's first two scenes, composed for Paris in 1861, also performed elsewhere, he was prepared to refrain from doing so if the practical circumstances were not present. This is also evident from a letter, which was presumably addressed to the intendant of the Vienna Court Opera, in which Wagner made it clear that he could only be happy with the insertion of the newly composed scenes if they were also performed outstandingly. It should not be surprising, therefore, that in his Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen he reprinted his guidelines regarding the performance of Tannhäuser of 1852, in which, among other things, six optional deletions/shortcuts are indicated, including the omission of the first stanza of Tannhäuser's Venus song. How seriously Wagner dealt with these interventions can be seen from the fact, that in his Paris version of 1861 he composed the second Tannhäuser scene completely new. Of course, behind the truncations envisaged by the composer himself, there is probably also the hope that in this way he would be able to prevent cuts in other places.
Pragmatism, which mediates between the idea of the work and the most successful realization on stage, allows not only as ultima ratio a shortening, but in certain cases also an addition or extension. For example, during the first Bayreuther Festival of 1876, the change between the second and third scenes of the third act in the Götterdämmerung lasted longer than the music provided for it. The funeral march - for that is what it is about - was thus prolonged at the end. In what way this was done, however, we do not know, since the extension itself has not been preserved. The addition is thus also apparently justified for the sake of theatrical purpose.
Adaptations
As for the abridgements that Wagner, according to Cosima's diary, wanted to make in Tristan, they were less about mere abridgements than the writing of a new version, which Wagner began soon after the work was created. Even after no cuts were made at the Munich premiere in 1865, due to the unrelenting Tristan singer Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Wagner stuck to his idea for an adaptation. They are documented - as far as is known - in the appendix of the Tristan edition in the critical edition. Because Wagner did not officially write down these intended deletions anywhere, and Cosima withheld them at a later stage, only the primal version is played to this day, notwithstanding Wagner himself distanced himself from it. It is to be hoped that the critical edition can provide a new breakthrough in this regard.
Fidelity to the work also presupposes fidelity to the various versions, for only by studying the various versions separately does one have the possibility of grasping the related intentions. Mixing different versions into a new whole makes the idea of the work unrecognizable. This is certainly true of Tannhäuser but equally true of Rienzi, and in musical terms also of Der fliegende Holländer. For it is precisely the edits that sharpen the awareness regarding Wagner's dramatic-dramaturgical as well as musical insights and their evolution. After all, the instrumentation retouches, which Wagner added to the score of the Holländer between the first and second versions, provide a better understanding not only of the changes in the composer's aesthetic views, but also of the new requirements of musical theater, as Wagner envisioned.
Conclusion
Because the score does not provide the key to solving all the questions, which arise in the performance of a work by Wagner - at least not in a literal sense - it must be approached critically, both in a historical and philological and even aesthetic sense. And such handling of the score unlocks and opens up possibilities and spaces, which allow themselves to be used creatively. Consequently, some measures - even if superficially they seem to be an offense against the score - should not be shunned.
Let it be clear that the criterion for all permissible liberties is the meaning of the work and the related correct and convincing theatrical realization. One may even try it - if there is no other way - with firm interventions in the score, because the ideal must be to realize what the composer had in mind. This is how Wagner envisioned it, also with regard to the works of other composers.
The careful handling of Wagner's scores should by no means degenerate into anxious cautiousness. After all, Wagner's art presupposes a relentless challenge. Performing Wagner, therefore, demands that this challenge be constantly met and renewed. When Wagner first realized his Ring des Nibelungen on stage in Bayreuth in 1876, he was essentially performing what the subtitle of the tetralogy prescribes Ein Bühnenspiel für drei Tage und einen Vorabend. Indeed, he played the four movements on four consecutive days. At the beginning of the 21st century, no one seems to dare to face this challenge with regard to the performers and the watching and listening public. However, it would be worthwhile.