August 18, 2025 • 39 mins
Dive into the captivating world of Gustav Kobbe, a German-American music critic who lived during the vibrant era of Liszt and Wagner. With a distinct flair for storytelling, Kobbe offers a romantic and entertaining exploration of the loves and lives of seven iconic composers, all while firmly aligning himself with the Wagnerian perspective. His unique writing style, filled with rich imagery and unusual sentence constructions, transports listeners to the 19th century, making each chapter a delightful auditory experience. Wagner receives an especially thorough account, reflecting Kobbes personal claims of familiarity with both Liszt and Wagner, as well as Cosima Wagner. This blend of anecdote and insight creates an original narrative that stands apart from more traditional biographies. (Peter Thomlinson)
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter seven of the Loves of Great Composers by Gustav Cobe.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by
Peter Tomlinson, Chapter seven Wagner and Cossimer. No woman, not
a professional musician, has ever played so important a part
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in musical history as Frau Cossimer, the widow of Richard Wagner.
In fact, has any woman professional musician or not. Bear
in mind who fral Cossimer 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
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and in the most exalted meaning of the term, the
help meet, of the greatest of all composers. The two
men with whom Cossimer has thus stood in such intimate
relation are exceptional, even among great musicians. Composers are usually
strongly emotional inspired in all that pertains to their art,
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but with a specialist lack of interest in everything else.
Not so, however, Liszt or Wagner. For not since the
time of Beethoven had there been two musicians who, in
the exercise of their art, approached it from so clear
an intellectual standpoint. Beethoven, through the greatness of his mind,
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was able to enlance the symphonic form which had been
left by Heiden and Mozart. It became more responsive, more
plastic in his hands. Form in art is the creation
of the intellect. What goes into it is the outflow
of the art. Thus List created the symphonic poem, and
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Wagner completely revolutionized the musical stage by creating the music
drama into the symphonic poem, into the visit drama. They
put their hearts, But the creation of these forms was
in each an intellectual tour de force. The musician who
thinks as well as fields is the one who advances
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his art. In the historic struggle between Wagner and the classicists,
List played a large part. He was the first to
produce Leewengrin was as orchestral conductor, its subtle interpreter, and
thus a pioneer of the New School. He was Wagner's
steadfast champion through life, and a beautiful friendship existed between
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Richard and France. Even now, the reader can begin to
realize the role Cossima has played in music. That she
is the daughter of List is not in itself wonderful
but that she should have fulfilled the mission to which
she was born is one of the most exquisite touches
of fate. Liszt was one of Wagner's first champions and friends.
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He came to the composer's age in the darkest years
of his career, during that long exile, after Wagner had
been obliged to flee from Germany because of his participation
in the Revolution of eighteen forty eight. It was in
fact through Lists that Wagner received the means to continue
his flight from the Saxon authorities and cross the border
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to safety in Switzerland. Nor did Liszt's beneficience stop there.
From Afar, he continued to be Wagner's good fairy. To
fully appreciate List's action at this time, one must keep
in mind the position of the Saxon composer today. His
fame is worldwide. We can scarcely realize that there was
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a time when his genius was not recognized. But at
that time he was not famous at all. Those who
had the slightest premonition of what the future would accord
him were a mere handful of enthusiasts. Such a thing
as a Wagner cult was un dreamed of. He had
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produced three works for the stage. Rienzi had been a
brilliant success, the Flying Dutchman a mere success, Destiny Tannhaeuser
a comparative failure. From a popular point of view, he
had not sustained the promise of his first work. We
know now that compare with his second and third works,
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Rienzi is trash, and that really has a composer made
such wonderful forward strides in his art, as did Wagner
with The Flying Dutchman and Tannhaeuser. But that was not
the opinion when they were produced. The former, although it
is now acknowledged to be an exquisitively poetic treatment of
the weird Legend, was voted somber and dull, and Tannhauser
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was simply a puzzle. After listening to Tannhauser, Schumann declared
that Wagner was unmusical. Unless a person is familiar with
Wagner's life, it is impossible to believe how bitter was
the the opposition to his theories and to his music.
Does it seem possible now that he had to struggle
for twenty five years before he could secure the production
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of his Ring of the Nibelung. Yet such was the
case then too. He was poor and sometimes driven to
such straits that he contemplated suicide. When the public remained
indifferent to one of his works and his critics reviled it,
Wagner's usual method of reply was to produce something still
more advanced. Thus, when Tanhaus approved Caviare to the public
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and seemed to affect the critics like a red rag
waved before a bull, he promptly sat down and wrote
and composed Loelingrin. But how should he, an exile, secure
its production? There it lay a mute score. As he
turned its pages, the notes looked out at him appealingly
for a hearing. It was like a homesick child asking
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for its own. What did Wagner do? He wrote a
few lines to list. The answer was not long in coming.
List was already making the necessary arrangements to exceed to
Wagner's request and produce Leegrin in Weimar, where he was
musical director. This name gave great igla to the undertaking
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and through the acclaim which, with the aid of his
pupils and admirers, he understood so well how to create
it attracted widespread attention, musicians from far and near in
Germany coming to hear it. Of course, opinions on the
work were divided, but the band of Wagner enthusiasts received accessions,
and the interest in the production had been too intense
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not to leave an impression. The performance was, in fact
hip hop making. It raised a Wagner question which would
not down, which kept at least his earliest works before
the public, and which made him, even while still a
fugitive from Germany and an exile, a prominent figure in
immusey circles of the country that refused him the right
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to cross its borders. All this was done by List,
next to Wagner's own genius, which would eventually have fought
its way into the open. The influence that first brought
Wagner some degree of recognition was Fran's List. His assistance
to Wagner at this stage in that composer's career cannot
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be overestimated. He was his tonic in despair, his solace
in his darkest hours. Few men appear in a nobler
role than this. In his correspondence with Wagner during this period,
Is it not marvelous? At some twenty years later, at
another crisis in Wagner's life, another being came to his
aid and became to him as a haven of rest,
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and that that being should have been none other than
the daughter of his earlier benefactor, Franz List. Fate often
is cruel and often unaccountable, but in this instance it
seemed to have acted the role of Cupid within its
quisite sense of what was appropriate, and to have set
the crowning glory of a great woman's love upon Wagner's career.
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When List was producing Loegrin, aiding Wagner pecuniarily and cheering
him in his exile, Cossimer List was a young girl
in Paris, where she her elder sister Blandine, afterwards the
wife of Emil Oliva, who became the war minister of
Napoleon the Third, and her brother Daniel, lived with LIS's mother.
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It was in Madame LIS's house that Wagner first met her.
He had gone to Paris in hopes of furthering his
cause there. During his sojourn, he held a reading of
his libretto to the Ring of the Nibulum at Madame
Lists before a choice audience which included List, Ballios and
von Bulo. This occurred in the early fifties. Cosima, who
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was among the listeners, was at the time fifteen or
sixteen years old. The mere fact of her presence at
the reading is recorded. Whether she was impressed with the
libretto or its author, we do not know. It is
probable their meeting consisted of nothing more than the mere
formal introduction of the composer to the girl who was
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the daughter of his friend list and who was to
be one of the small and privileged gathering at the reading.
Wagner soon left Paris, and if she made any impression
on him at that time, he does not mention the
fact in his letters. Whoever takes the trouble to read
Lists Correspondents, which is in seven volumes and nearly all
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in French, will have little difficulty in discerning that Cossima
was his favorite child. He speaks of her affectionately as
Cosette and Cosimet. Like his own. Her temperament was artistic
and responsive, and she also inherited his charm of manner
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and his exquisite tact, which, if anything, her early bringing
up in Paris enhanced. In eighteen fifty seven, when she
was twenty, Wagner saw her again and described her as
Liszt's wonderful image, but of superior intellect. Well might Wagner
speak of her resemblance to her father as wonderful. I
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have seen List and Cosima together on an occasion to
be referred to later, and was struck with the remarkable
likeness between father and daughter. Both were idealists. If he
had his eyes upon the stars, so had she. Here
is a passage from one of List's letters in a
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penz feedrit Da Cossima the celce coote counturnae latouche la
flam sayledress er monte veaes lacielle, a favorite thought of Cosmas.
Whichever way you may turn the torch, the flame turns
on itself and still points towards the heavens. A woman
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whose life holds that motto is in herself an inspiration.
Whatever turn fortune takes, her aspiration still blazes the way.
She herself is the torch of her motto. Although not
a musician, Although keeping herself consistently in the background during
Wagner's life much as a mere private secretary would, her
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influence at Bayrout was continually felt and since his death
has been the head and front of the Wagner movement,
and yet, without seeking publicity, her intellectual force quietly assured
her the succession. There have been protests against her absolute rule,
but she has serenely ignored them. She still molds to
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her will all the forces concerned in the Bayrout productions.
When Madame Nordica was preparing to sing Elsa at bay Roight,
it was Frau Cosima who went over the role with her,
sometimes repeating a single phrase one hundred times in order
to assure the correct pronunciation of one word. It taxed
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the singer to the utmost, but she found Wagner's widow
willing to work as long and as hard as she
herself would. The performance established Madame Nordica as a Wagner singer,
despite the criticisms that had been heaped upon Frau Wagner
for assuming to set herself up as the great conservator
of Wagnerian traditions. It is significant that when some years
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later Madame Nordica decided to add c Glinda to her repertoire,
but with no special purpose of singing it at Bayrout,
she arranged with Frau Cosima to go over the role
with her, and in order to do so, made a
trip to Switzerland, where the former was staying. So far
as adding to her reputation, was concerned there were not
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the slightest reason for Madame Nordica to do this. That
the American Prima Donna elected to study with Frau Cossimer
shows that she must have found Wagner's widow a woman
of rare temperament. Cossimer was not Wagner's first love, nor
even his first wife, for in November eighteen thirty six
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he had married Wilhelmina Plainer, the leading actress of the
theater in Magdeburg, where he was musical director of opera.
Her father was a spindle maker. It is said that
her desire to earn money for the household, rather than
the impetus of a well defined histrionic gift, let her
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to go on the stage. But once on the stage,
she discovered that she had unquestionable talent and played leading
characters in tragedy and comedy with success. Mina is described
as handsome, but not strikingly so, of medium height and
slim figure, with soft gazelle like eyes. Which were a
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faithful index of a tender heart. Later, however, the Princess
Saint Wckenstein wrote to List that she was too stout,
but praised her management of the household and her excellent cuisine.
Her nature was the very opposite of Wagner's. Where he
was passionate, strong willed, and ambitious, she was gentle, affectionate,
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and retiring. Where he yearned for conquest, she wanted only
a well regulated home. But she could not follow him
in his art theories, and as they assumed more definite shape,
she became less and less able to comprehend them, and
finally they became almost a sealed book to her. Doubtless,
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the ill success of the Flying Dutchman and Tannhauser works, which,
after Rienzi puzzled people, engendered her first misunderstanding of Wagner's genius.
Some may be surprised is that this lack of appreciation
did not bring about a separation sooner instead of after
nearly a quarter of a century of married life. But
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when a man is struggling with poverty, the woman who
unobtrusively aids him in bearing it is regarded by him
as an angel of light, and the question as to
whether she appreciates his genius or not becomes a secondary
one in the struggle for existence. But when at last
there is some promise of success, some relief from drudgery,
and with it a little leisure for companionship, then too
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there is opportunity for an estimate of intellectual quality. Then
it is that the man of genius discovers that the
woman who has stood by him throughout his poverty lacks
the graces of mind necessary to his complete happiness. And
the self sacrificing wife, who has been his drudge in
order that he might the better meet want, and who
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has perhaps lost her youth and her looks in his service,
is forgotten for someone else. The worst of it is
that the word the world forgets her and all she
has done for the great man in her quiet, uncomplaining way.
The drudge never finds a page in the loves of
the poets. The woman who comes in and reaps where
the other has sown does. Wagner's friend, Ferdinand Prager, has
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much to say of Mina's fine qualities, but he also
tells several anecdotes which completely illustrate how absolutely she failed
to comprehend Wagner's genius and ambition. Prague visited them in
their Trimleycats with Chalet in Zurich in the summer of
eighteen fifty six. One day, when Prager and Mina were
seated at the luncheon table waiting for Wagner, who was
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scoring the nibulum, to come down from his study, she asked, now, honestly,
is Richard really such a great genius? Remember that this
question was asked about the composer of The Flying Dutchman,
Tannhauser and Lohengrin. If she was unable to discover his
genius in these how could she be expected to follow
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its loftier flights in his later works. On another occasion,
when Wagner was complaining that the public did not understand him,
she said, well, Richard, why don't you write something for
the gallery? So little did she understand the man whose
genius was founded upon unswerving devotion to artistic truth. During
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Prager's visit, a former singer in the Magdelburgh Opera and
her two daughters called on Wagner. They sang the music
of the Rhine Daughters from Rheingold. When they finished singing,
Mina asked prager, is it really as beautiful as you say?
It does not seem so to me, and I am
afraid it would not sound so to others. While, as
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can be shown from passages in his correspondence, Wagner appreciated
the homely virtues of his first wife, and never, even
after they had separated, allowed a word to be spoken
against her. The last years of their married life were stormy.
She had been tried beyond her strength, and not sharing
her husband's enormous confidence in his artistic powers, she had
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not the stimulus of his faith in his ultimate success
to sustain her. Moreover, a heart trouble with which she
was afflicted resulted through the strain to which their uncertain
material condition subjected her in a growing irritability, which was
accentuated by jealousy of women who entered the growing circle
of Wagner's admirers as his genius began to be appreciated.
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The crisis came in eighteen fifty eight when they separated,
Mina retiring to Dresden. Two years later, when Wagner was
in in Paris, she went there and nursed him, but
they separated again. An interesting fact not generally known is
that in eighteen sixty two, when Wagner was in Beiebrick
on the Rhine composing his Meister Singer, Mina came from
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Dresden as a surprise to pay him a visit, evidently
an effort to affect a reconciliation. Vendelin vai Zheimer, a
conductor at the opera in my Use on the opposite
bank of the river and a close friend of Wagner's
at that time, has left an enlightening record of the episode. Wagner,
he says, the heaven storming genius who knew no bounds,
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tried to play the role of housewata, of loving husband
and comforter. He had some cold edibles brought in from
the hotel, made tea, and himself boiled half a dozen eggs.
What a picture, the composer of Tristan boiling eggs. Afterwards,
he put on one of his familiar velvet dressing gowns
and a fitting baretta, and proceeded to read aloud the
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book of De Maister Singer. The first act passed off
without mishaps, save for some unnecessary questions from Mina, but
at the beginning of the second act, when he had
described the stage, setting to the right, the cobbler's shop
of hand sacks to the left, etc. Mima exclaimed, and
here SIT's the audience, at the same time letting a
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bread roll over Wagner's manuscript. That ended the reading. The visit,
of course, was futile. Mina returned to Dresden, where she
died in eighteen sixty six. Poor Mina a good cook,
but she did not appreciate his genius. Would seem to
sum up her story. Yet it is but just that
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we should pay at least a passing salute to this woman,
who was the love of Wagner's youth and the dragia
of his middle life, and who, from the distance of
her lonely separation, saw him basking in the favor of
the King, who, too late for her, had become his
munificent patron. What a contrast between her fate and Cosmas.
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Were it not for this letters, meager would be the
information regarding Cosima before her marriage to Wagner. But by
going over his voluminous correspondence and picking up references to
her here and there, I am able to give at
least some idea of her earlier life. This extraordinary woman
who brought Wagners so much happiness, and of whom it
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may be said that no other woman ever played so
important a part in the history of music. Came to
her many graces and accompliments. By right of birth, she
was the daughter of Liszt and the Countess de Agault,
a French author better known under her pen name of
Daniel Stern. Thus she had genius on one side of
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her parentage and distinguished talent on the other, and on
both sides rare personal charm and tact. The Countess de
Agault's father, Viscount Flavigni, was an old Royalist nobleman. While
an emigree during the Revolution, he had married the beautiful
daughter of the Frankfurt banker Bethmann. After the Flavigni's return
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to France, their daughter, an extremely beautiful blonde, was brought
up partly at the Flavigni chateau, partly at the Sacraqueur
de Marie in Paris. Talented beyond her years, her wit
and beauty won her much admiration. At an early age,
she married Count Charles de Gaulte, a French officer, a
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member of the old aristocracy, and twenty years her senior
When she first met Lis, she was twenty nine years old,
had been married six years, and was the mother of
three children. She still was beautiful, and in her salon
she gathered around her men and women of rank, espirit
and fame. In eighteen thirty five, List left Paris after
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the concert season there. The Countess followed him, and the
next heard of them they were in Switzerland. They remained
together six years, Cosima born in eighteen thirty seven, being
one of the three children resulting from the union. In
the Countess's relations with Lis, there appears to have been
a curious mingling of la grand passion and hauteur, for
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when soon after she had joined him in Switzerland he
urged at to secure a divorce in order that they
might marry, she drew herself up and replied, Madame la
Comtesse du Gault Nacier de Gameis, Madame List, Certainly, none
but a frenchwoman would have been capable of such a
reply under the same circumstances. Equally French, was her husband's remark.
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When the Countess's support having been assumed by List, he
expressed the opinion that throughout the whole affair, the pianists
had behaved like a man of honor. After the separation
of List and the Countess de Gault, he entrusted the
care of the three children to his mother. During a
brief sojourn in Paris, Wagner met Cossimer, then a girl
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of sixteen, for the first time. She formed with List,
von Bulo, Burlios, and a few others the very small
but extremely select audience which at the house of List's
mother heard Wagner read selections from his Nibelung dramas in
eighteen fifty five. The burden of the care of the
children falling too heavily upon Lists, the duty of looking
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after the daughters was cheerfully undertaken by the mother of
Hans von Bulloh, who resided in Berlin. In a letter
written by von Buloh in June eighteen fifty six, he
speaks of them in these interesting terms. These wonderful girls
bear their name with right, full of talent, cleverness and life.
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They are interesting personalities, such as I have rarely met
another than I would be happy in their companionship. But
their evident superiority annoys me, and the impossibility to appear
sufficiently interesting to them prevents my appreciating the pleasure of
their society as much as I would like to. There,
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you have a confession the canter, which you will not deny.
It is not very flattering for a young man, but
it is absolutely true. Yet a year later he married Cossima,
one of the girls whose superiority so annoyed him. How
strange in view of what happened later that von Buloh
so planned his wedding trip that its main objective was
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a visit to Zurich in order that he might present
Cosima to Wagner, who had not seen us since she
had formed one of his audience at the Rhinegold Reading
in Paris. It is in a letter to his friend
Richard Pohle, written the day before his wedding, that von
Buloh mentions that Wagnerstadt Zurich as the aim of his
wedding journey. Was it fate or fatality that led him thither?
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With Cossima, the daughter of Liszt, the bride of von Buloh,
being conducted on her honeymoon to the very lair of
the great composer for whom she was within a few
years to leave her husband. What wonderful musical links destiny
wove in the life of this woman, who herself was
not a musician. Hans and Cosimo arrived at Zurich early
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in September for the last fortnight. Writes from Bulau under
data say September the nineteenth, eighteen fifty seven. I and
my wife have been living in Wagner's house, and I
didn't know anything else that could have afforded me such benefit,
such refreshment as being together with this wonderful, unique man,
whom I should worship as a god. On his side,
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Wagner was charmed with the von Bulohs. In one of
his letters, he speaks of their visit as his most
delightful experience of the summer. They spent three weeks in
our little house. I have really been so pleasantly and
delightfully affected as by their informal visit. In the mornings
they had to keep quiet, for I was writing my Tristan,
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at which I read them and act aloud every week.
If you knew Cousimer, you would agree with me when
I concluded that this young pair is wonderfully well mated.
With all their great intelligence and real artistic sympathy, there
is something so light and buoyant in the two young
people that one was obliged to feel perfectly at home
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with them. Wagner allowed them to depart only under promise
that they would return next year, which they did to
find a household on the verge of disruption and to
be unwilling witnesses to some of the closing scenes of
Wagner's first marriage. During her childhood in Paris, Cossimer was
frail and delicate. Liszt, in one of his letters, confesses
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that this caused him to regard her with a deeper
affection than he bestowed on her elder sister. Later, he
speaks of her as a rare and beautiful nature, of
great and spontaneous charm. A friend of Liszt, who saw
her at the Altenburg in eighteen sixty, writes that she
was a pale, slender when and thin to a degree,
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and that she crept through the room like a shadow.
This was greatly concerned about her, for the year previous,
her brother Daniel had died of consumption, and he feared
she might be stricken with the same malady. Daniel's death
was a sad experience through which they passed together and
which strengthened the ties of tenderness that drew list to
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his younger daughter. The son died in his father's arms,
and in her presence she had nursed him devotedly in
his last illness. Cossimer tells me this wrote before he
had seen Daniel on his sick bed, that the color
of his beard and of his hair has taken on
a touch of brownish red, as he looks like a
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christ by Correggio. Together, after Daniel's death, they knelt beside
his bed, praying to God that his will be done,
and that he reconcile us with that divine will in
according us the grace on our part to accept it
without a murmur. Such a scene was a memory for
a lifetime. Cosima herself, in one of her letters, gives
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a beautiful description of a brother's passage from life. He
fell back into the arms of death, as into those
of a guardian angel from whom he had been waiting
a long time. There was no struggle without a distasteful life.
He seemed, nevertheless, to have aspired ardently towards eternity with
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a pretty touch. Liszt gives an idea of Cosima's interest
in others. It seems that a certain frow Stilk was
anxious to possess a gray dress of moi antique, and
List had persuaded the Princess Saint Witttenstein to place the
necessary sum for buying it at his daughter's disposal in
order to estimate the cost, He writes, Cosette has devised
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this excellent formula. It should be addressed such as one
would give to persons who want a dress. Only it
is necessary that it should be gray and of moi
antique to satisfy the ideal of taste of the person
in question. Vardner does not seem to have seen Cosma
after the Vonboulu's second visit to him at Zurich, until
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they came to him for a visit at Bibasch during
the summer of eighty sixty two. What a contrast Cosima
must have seen to poor Mina, who, in the same
house and but a short time before, had desecrated the
manuscript of De Meister Singer by allowing a bred ball
to roll over it. Wagner's favorite opinion of hands and
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Cosima underwent a great change during their sojourn with him.
In a letter, after speaking of von Bulou's depression owing
to poor health. He writes, add to this a tragic
marriage a young woman of extraordinary, quite unprecedented endowment, lists
wonderful image, but of superior intellect. That this woman, who
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so impressed Wagner, was in her turn filled with admiration
for his gifts appears from two letters which during the
summer of eighteen sixty two she wrote from Biebrick to
her father. In one of these she speaks enthusiastically of
some of the Tristan music. The other letter concerns De
meister Singer. The meister Singer is to Wagner, as other conceptions,
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what though Winter's Tale is to Shakespeare's other works. Its
fantasy is founded on gaiety and drollery, and it has
called up the Nuremberg of the Middle Ages, with its guilds,
its poet artisans, its pedants, its cavaliers, to draw forth
the freshest laughter in the midst of the highest, the
most ideal poetry. It is evident that two souls so
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sympathetic could not long remain in proximity without craving a
closer union. Coming events cast their shadows before, remarks one
who was often present during the Beiberick visit of the
von Bulohs to Wagner. How deeply Cosmo sympathized with Wagner's
aims even then is shown by another episode of this visit.
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One evening, the composer outlined to his friends his plans
were Passifal, adding that it probably would be his last work.
The Little Circle was deeply affected and Cosima wept strange prescience.
Parsifal was not produced until twenty years later, yet it
proved to be the final of Wagner's life's labors. The
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incident has interest from another point of view. It shows
that Wagner had his plans for Parsifal fairly matured in
eighteen sixty two, that it was not, as some critics
who see in it a decadence of his powers, claim,
a late afterthought designed to give to Byroid a curiosity
somewhat after the facon of the Oberamagau passion play decadence.
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Henry T. Fink, the most consistent and eloquent champion Wagner
has had in America, sees in it no falling off
in the composer's genius, nor do I. Wagner scores always
fully voice his dramas passival as completely as any. The
subject simply required different musical treatment from the heroic ring
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of the Nebulum and the impassioned Tristan. In a letter
written by Wagner in June eighteen sixty four, 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
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and of devotion to his art. Since I last saw
you in Munich, Wagner writes to a friend, I have
not again left my asylum, which in the meantime also
has become the refuge of her, who was destined to
prove that I could well be helped, and that the
axiom of my many friends that I could not be
helped was false. She knew that I could be helped,
(33:45):
and has helped me. She has defied every disapprobation and
takes upon herself every condemnation. This was written in June
eighteen seventy, a year after Cosima had borne him Siegfried,
and two months before their marriage. For August eighteen seventy,
the following announcement was sent out. We have the honor
to announce our marriage, which took place on the twenty
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fifth of August of this year in the Protestant church
in Lucerne. Richard Wagner Cossima Wagner nay List August twenty fifth,
eighteen seventy. When in eighteen eighty two I attended the
first performance of passerfal In by Roight, I had frequent
opportunity of seeing Wagner and Frau Cossimer. Probably the best
(34:31):
view I had of them together and of France List
at the same time, was at a dinner given by
Wagner to the artists who took part in the performances.
It was in one of the restaurants near the theatre on
the hill overlooking by Roight. Wagner's entrance upon the scene
was highly theatrical. All the singers and a few other
guests had been seated, and List, Frau Cosima and Siegfried
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Wagner were in their places when the door opened and
in shot Wagner. It was as well calculated as the
entrance of the star in a play. On his way
to his seat, he stopped and chatted a few moments
with this one and that one. Instead of Wagner sitting
at the head of the table and his wife at
the foot. They sat together in the middle. It seemed
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impossible for him, though, to remain seated more than a
few minutes at a time, and he was jumping up
and down and running about the table all through the banquet.
On the other side of Wagner sat List. On the
other side of Frau Cosima, Siegfried Wagner, then still a boy.
Among the four, there were two pairs of likenesses. Liszt
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was gray. But although Fraul Cosimo's hair was blonde and
her face smooth and fair, as compared with the father's,
which was furrowed with age and boldly aquiline, she was
his child in every liniment. Moreover, the quick responsive lighting
up of the features, her graceful bearing, her tact that
these were inherited from him. A brief vaillance of the
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two sufficed to disclose. Combining with these fascinating but after
all more or less superficial characteristics, was the stamp of
a rare intellectual force on both faces. No one seeing
them together needed to be told that Cosima was a List,
nor did anyone need to be told that Siegfried was
(36:21):
a Wagner. The boy was as much like his father
as his mother was like hers. Feature for feature, Wagner
was reproduced in his son. That there should be no
trace of the mother, and such a mother in the
boy's face struck me as remarkable, but there was none.
Siegfried Wagner was a veritable pocket edition of his famous father.
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His later photographs as a young man show that much
of this likeness has disappeared. After dinner there were speeches. Wagner,
his hand resting affectionately on Li's shoulder, paid a feeling
tribute to the man who had befriended him early in
his career, and who had given him the precious wife
at his side. I remember, as if it had been
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but last night, the tenderness with which he spoke the
words in d there Gattin. It was a wonderful two
or three hours that banquet, with the numerous notabilities present,
and at least two great men list In Wagner, and
one great woman, the daughter of List and the wife
of Wagner. And the experience is to be treasured all
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the more because few of those present saw Wagner again.
Early in the following year, he died at Venice. He
is buried in the garden back of Varnfried his Byrot Villa.
He was a great lover of animals, and at his
burial his two favorite dogs, Votin and Mark, burst through
the bushes that surround the grave and join the mourners.
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One of these pets is buried near him, and on
the slab is the inscription. Here lies in peace Vanfried's
faithful watcher and friend, the good and handsome Mark. What
Cosima was to Wagner is best told in less words
written to a friend after a visit to Byrot in
eighteen seventy two, when his favorite child had been married
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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 sent her to the flying Dutchman,
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and she will prove his salvation because he listens to
her and follows her with keen perception that by Roight,
with Wagner's death, did not become a mere tradition that
the Wagner performances still continue, there is due to fowl. Cosima.
She is by Roight. No woman has made such an
(38:57):
impression on the music of her time as she. Yet
she is not a musician. End of Chapter seven recording
by Peter Tomlinson. End of The Loves of Great Composers
by Gustave Coby
Chapter seven of the Loves of Great Composers by Gustav Cobe.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by
Peter Tomlinson, Chapter seven Wagner and Cossimer. No woman, not
a professional musician, has ever played so important a part
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in musical history as Frau Cossimer, the widow of Richard Wagner.
In fact, has any woman professional musician or not. Bear
in mind who fral Cossimer 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
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and in the most exalted meaning of the term, the
help meet, of the greatest of all composers. The two
men with whom Cossimer has thus stood in such intimate
relation are exceptional, even among great musicians. Composers are usually
strongly emotional inspired in all that pertains to their art,
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but with a specialist lack of interest in everything else.
Not so, however, Liszt or Wagner. For not since the
time of Beethoven had there been two musicians who, in
the exercise of their art, approached it from so clear
an intellectual standpoint. Beethoven, through the greatness of his mind,
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was able to enlance the symphonic form which had been
left by Heiden and Mozart. It became more responsive, more
plastic in his hands. Form in art is the creation
of the intellect. What goes into it is the outflow
of the art. Thus List created the symphonic poem, and
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Wagner completely revolutionized the musical stage by creating the music
drama into the symphonic poem, into the visit drama. They
put their hearts, But the creation of these forms was
in each an intellectual tour de force. The musician who
thinks as well as fields is the one who advances
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his art. In the historic struggle between Wagner and the classicists,
List played a large part. He was the first to
produce Leewengrin was as orchestral conductor, its subtle interpreter, and
thus a pioneer of the New School. He was Wagner's
steadfast champion through life, and a beautiful friendship existed between
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Richard and France. Even now, the reader can begin to
realize the role Cossima has played in music. That she
is the daughter of List is not in itself wonderful
but that she should have fulfilled the mission to which
she was born is one of the most exquisite touches
of fate. Liszt was one of Wagner's first champions and friends.
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He came to the composer's age in the darkest years
of his career, during that long exile, after Wagner had
been obliged to flee from Germany because of his participation
in the Revolution of eighteen forty eight. It was in
fact through Lists that Wagner received the means to continue
his flight from the Saxon authorities and cross the border
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to safety in Switzerland. Nor did Liszt's beneficience stop there.
From Afar, he continued to be Wagner's good fairy. To
fully appreciate List's action at this time, one must keep
in mind the position of the Saxon composer today. His
fame is worldwide. We can scarcely realize that there was
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a time when his genius was not recognized. But at
that time he was not famous at all. Those who
had the slightest premonition of what the future would accord
him were a mere handful of enthusiasts. Such a thing
as a Wagner cult was un dreamed of. He had
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produced three works for the stage. Rienzi had been a
brilliant success, the Flying Dutchman a mere success, Destiny Tannhaeuser
a comparative failure. From a popular point of view, he
had not sustained the promise of his first work. We
know now that compare with his second and third works,
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Rienzi is trash, and that really has a composer made
such wonderful forward strides in his art, as did Wagner
with The Flying Dutchman and Tannhaeuser. But that was not
the opinion when they were produced. The former, although it
is now acknowledged to be an exquisitively poetic treatment of
the weird Legend, was voted somber and dull, and Tannhauser
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was simply a puzzle. After listening to Tannhauser, Schumann declared
that Wagner was unmusical. Unless a person is familiar with
Wagner's life, it is impossible to believe how bitter was
the the opposition to his theories and to his music.
Does it seem possible now that he had to struggle
for twenty five years before he could secure the production
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of his Ring of the Nibelung. Yet such was the
case then too. He was poor and sometimes driven to
such straits that he contemplated suicide. When the public remained
indifferent to one of his works and his critics reviled it,
Wagner's usual method of reply was to produce something still
more advanced. Thus, when Tanhaus approved Caviare to the public
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and seemed to affect the critics like a red rag
waved before a bull, he promptly sat down and wrote
and composed Loelingrin. But how should he, an exile, secure
its production? There it lay a mute score. As he
turned its pages, the notes looked out at him appealingly
for a hearing. It was like a homesick child asking
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for its own. What did Wagner do? He wrote a
few lines to list. The answer was not long in coming.
List was already making the necessary arrangements to exceed to
Wagner's request and produce Leegrin in Weimar, where he was
musical director. This name gave great igla to the undertaking
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and through the acclaim which, with the aid of his
pupils and admirers, he understood so well how to create
it attracted widespread attention, musicians from far and near in
Germany coming to hear it. Of course, opinions on the
work were divided, but the band of Wagner enthusiasts received accessions,
and the interest in the production had been too intense
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not to leave an impression. The performance was, in fact
hip hop making. It raised a Wagner question which would
not down, which kept at least his earliest works before
the public, and which made him, even while still a
fugitive from Germany and an exile, a prominent figure in
immusey circles of the country that refused him the right
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to cross its borders. All this was done by List,
next to Wagner's own genius, which would eventually have fought
its way into the open. The influence that first brought
Wagner some degree of recognition was Fran's List. His assistance
to Wagner at this stage in that composer's career cannot
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be overestimated. He was his tonic in despair, his solace
in his darkest hours. Few men appear in a nobler
role than this. In his correspondence with Wagner during this period,
Is it not marvelous? At some twenty years later, at
another crisis in Wagner's life, another being came to his
aid and became to him as a haven of rest,
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and that that being should have been none other than
the daughter of his earlier benefactor, Franz List. Fate often
is cruel and often unaccountable, but in this instance it
seemed to have acted the role of Cupid within its
quisite sense of what was appropriate, and to have set
the crowning glory of a great woman's love upon Wagner's career.
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When List was producing Loegrin, aiding Wagner pecuniarily and cheering
him in his exile, Cossimer List was a young girl
in Paris, where she her elder sister Blandine, afterwards the
wife of Emil Oliva, who became the war minister of
Napoleon the Third, and her brother Daniel, lived with LIS's mother.
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It was in Madame LIS's house that Wagner first met her.
He had gone to Paris in hopes of furthering his
cause there. During his sojourn, he held a reading of
his libretto to the Ring of the Nibulum at Madame
Lists before a choice audience which included List, Ballios and
von Bulo. This occurred in the early fifties. Cosima, who
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was among the listeners, was at the time fifteen or
sixteen years old. The mere fact of her presence at
the reading is recorded. Whether she was impressed with the
libretto or its author, we do not know. It is
probable their meeting consisted of nothing more than the mere
formal introduction of the composer to the girl who was
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the daughter of his friend list and who was to
be one of the small and privileged gathering at the reading.
Wagner soon left Paris, and if she made any impression
on him at that time, he does not mention the
fact in his letters. Whoever takes the trouble to read
Lists Correspondents, which is in seven volumes and nearly all
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in French, will have little difficulty in discerning that Cossima
was his favorite child. He speaks of her affectionately as
Cosette and Cosimet. Like his own. Her temperament was artistic
and responsive, and she also inherited his charm of manner
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and his exquisite tact, which, if anything, her early bringing
up in Paris enhanced. In eighteen fifty seven, when she
was twenty, Wagner saw her again and described her as
Liszt's wonderful image, but of superior intellect. Well might Wagner
speak of her resemblance to her father as wonderful. I
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have seen List and Cosima together on an occasion to
be referred to later, and was struck with the remarkable
likeness between father and daughter. Both were idealists. If he
had his eyes upon the stars, so had she. Here
is a passage from one of List's letters in a
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penz feedrit Da Cossima the celce coote counturnae latouche la
flam sayledress er monte veaes lacielle, a favorite thought of Cosmas.
Whichever way you may turn the torch, the flame turns
on itself and still points towards the heavens. A woman
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whose life holds that motto is in herself an inspiration.
Whatever turn fortune takes, her aspiration still blazes the way.
She herself is the torch of her motto. Although not
a musician, Although keeping herself consistently in the background during
Wagner's life much as a mere private secretary would, her
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influence at Bayrout was continually felt and since his death
has been the head and front of the Wagner movement,
and yet, without seeking publicity, her intellectual force quietly assured
her the succession. There have been protests against her absolute rule,
but she has serenely ignored them. She still molds to
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her will all the forces concerned in the Bayrout productions.
When Madame Nordica was preparing to sing Elsa at bay Roight,
it was Frau Cosima who went over the role with her,
sometimes repeating a single phrase one hundred times in order
to assure the correct pronunciation of one word. It taxed
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the singer to the utmost, but she found Wagner's widow
willing to work as long and as hard as she
herself would. The performance established Madame Nordica as a Wagner singer,
despite the criticisms that had been heaped upon Frau Wagner
for assuming to set herself up as the great conservator
of Wagnerian traditions. It is significant that when some years
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later Madame Nordica decided to add c Glinda to her repertoire,
but with no special purpose of singing it at Bayrout,
she arranged with Frau Cosima to go over the role
with her, and in order to do so, made a
trip to Switzerland, where the former was staying. So far
as adding to her reputation, was concerned there were not
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the slightest reason for Madame Nordica to do this. That
the American Prima Donna elected to study with Frau Cossimer
shows that she must have found Wagner's widow a woman
of rare temperament. Cossimer was not Wagner's first love, nor
even his first wife, for in November eighteen thirty six
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he had married Wilhelmina Plainer, the leading actress of the
theater in Magdeburg, where he was musical director of opera.
Her father was a spindle maker. It is said that
her desire to earn money for the household, rather than
the impetus of a well defined histrionic gift, let her
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to go on the stage. But once on the stage,
she discovered that she had unquestionable talent and played leading
characters in tragedy and comedy with success. Mina is described
as handsome, but not strikingly so, of medium height and
slim figure, with soft gazelle like eyes. Which were a
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faithful index of a tender heart. Later, however, the Princess
Saint Wckenstein wrote to List that she was too stout,
but praised her management of the household and her excellent cuisine.
Her nature was the very opposite of Wagner's. Where he
was passionate, strong willed, and ambitious, she was gentle, affectionate,
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and retiring. Where he yearned for conquest, she wanted only
a well regulated home. But she could not follow him
in his art theories, and as they assumed more definite shape,
she became less and less able to comprehend them, and
finally they became almost a sealed book to her. Doubtless,
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the ill success of the Flying Dutchman and Tannhauser works, which,
after Rienzi puzzled people, engendered her first misunderstanding of Wagner's genius.
Some may be surprised is that this lack of appreciation
did not bring about a separation sooner instead of after
nearly a quarter of a century of married life. But
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when a man is struggling with poverty, the woman who
unobtrusively aids him in bearing it is regarded by him
as an angel of light, and the question as to
whether she appreciates his genius or not becomes a secondary
one in the struggle for existence. But when at last
there is some promise of success, some relief from drudgery,
and with it a little leisure for companionship, then too
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there is opportunity for an estimate of intellectual quality. Then
it is that the man of genius discovers that the
woman who has stood by him throughout his poverty lacks
the graces of mind necessary to his complete happiness. And
the self sacrificing wife, who has been his drudge in
order that he might the better meet want, and who
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has perhaps lost her youth and her looks in his service,
is forgotten for someone else. The worst of it is
that the word the world forgets her and all she
has done for the great man in her quiet, uncomplaining way.
The drudge never finds a page in the loves of
the poets. The woman who comes in and reaps where
the other has sown does. Wagner's friend, Ferdinand Prager, has
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much to say of Mina's fine qualities, but he also
tells several anecdotes which completely illustrate how absolutely she failed
to comprehend Wagner's genius and ambition. Prague visited them in
their Trimleycats with Chalet in Zurich in the summer of
eighteen fifty six. One day, when Prager and Mina were
seated at the luncheon table waiting for Wagner, who was
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scoring the nibulum, to come down from his study, she asked, now, honestly,
is Richard really such a great genius? Remember that this
question was asked about the composer of The Flying Dutchman,
Tannhauser and Lohengrin. If she was unable to discover his
genius in these how could she be expected to follow
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its loftier flights in his later works. On another occasion,
when Wagner was complaining that the public did not understand him,
she said, well, Richard, why don't you write something for
the gallery? So little did she understand the man whose
genius was founded upon unswerving devotion to artistic truth. During
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Prager's visit, a former singer in the Magdelburgh Opera and
her two daughters called on Wagner. They sang the music
of the Rhine Daughters from Rheingold. When they finished singing,
Mina asked prager, is it really as beautiful as you say?
It does not seem so to me, and I am
afraid it would not sound so to others. While, as
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can be shown from passages in his correspondence, Wagner appreciated
the homely virtues of his first wife, and never, even
after they had separated, allowed a word to be spoken
against her. The last years of their married life were stormy.
She had been tried beyond her strength, and not sharing
her husband's enormous confidence in his artistic powers, she had
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not the stimulus of his faith in his ultimate success
to sustain her. Moreover, a heart trouble with which she
was afflicted resulted through the strain to which their uncertain
material condition subjected her in a growing irritability, which was
accentuated by jealousy of women who entered the growing circle
of Wagner's admirers as his genius began to be appreciated.
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The crisis came in eighteen fifty eight when they separated,
Mina retiring to Dresden. Two years later, when Wagner was
in in Paris, she went there and nursed him, but
they separated again. An interesting fact not generally known is
that in eighteen sixty two, when Wagner was in Beiebrick
on the Rhine composing his Meister Singer, Mina came from
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Dresden as a surprise to pay him a visit, evidently
an effort to affect a reconciliation. Vendelin vai Zheimer, a
conductor at the opera in my Use on the opposite
bank of the river and a close friend of Wagner's
at that time, has left an enlightening record of the episode. Wagner,
he says, the heaven storming genius who knew no bounds,
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tried to play the role of housewata, of loving husband
and comforter. He had some cold edibles brought in from
the hotel, made tea, and himself boiled half a dozen eggs.
What a picture, the composer of Tristan boiling eggs. Afterwards,
he put on one of his familiar velvet dressing gowns
and a fitting baretta, and proceeded to read aloud the
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book of De Maister Singer. The first act passed off
without mishaps, save for some unnecessary questions from Mina, but
at the beginning of the second act, when he had
described the stage, setting to the right, the cobbler's shop
of hand sacks to the left, etc. Mima exclaimed, and
here SIT's the audience, at the same time letting a
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bread roll over Wagner's manuscript. That ended the reading. The visit,
of course, was futile. Mina returned to Dresden, where she
died in eighteen sixty six. Poor Mina a good cook,
but she did not appreciate his genius. Would seem to
sum up her story. Yet it is but just that
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we should pay at least a passing salute to this woman,
who was the love of Wagner's youth and the dragia
of his middle life, and who, from the distance of
her lonely separation, saw him basking in the favor of
the King, who, too late for her, had become his
munificent patron. What a contrast between her fate and Cosmas.
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Were it not for this letters, meager would be the
information regarding Cosima before her marriage to Wagner. But by
going over his voluminous correspondence and picking up references to
her here and there, I am able to give at
least some idea of her earlier life. This extraordinary woman
who brought Wagners so much happiness, and of whom it
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may be said that no other woman ever played so
important a part in the history of music. Came to
her many graces and accompliments. By right of birth, she
was the daughter of Liszt and the Countess de Agault,
a French author better known under her pen name of
Daniel Stern. Thus she had genius on one side of
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her parentage and distinguished talent on the other, and on
both sides rare personal charm and tact. The Countess de
Agault's father, Viscount Flavigni, was an old Royalist nobleman. While
an emigree during the Revolution, he had married the beautiful
daughter of the Frankfurt banker Bethmann. After the Flavigni's return
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to France, their daughter, an extremely beautiful blonde, was brought
up partly at the Flavigni chateau, partly at the Sacraqueur
de Marie in Paris. Talented beyond her years, her wit
and beauty won her much admiration. At an early age,
she married Count Charles de Gaulte, a French officer, a
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member of the old aristocracy, and twenty years her senior
When she first met Lis, she was twenty nine years old,
had been married six years, and was the mother of
three children. She still was beautiful, and in her salon
she gathered around her men and women of rank, espirit
and fame. In eighteen thirty five, List left Paris after
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the concert season there. The Countess followed him, and the
next heard of them they were in Switzerland. They remained
together six years, Cosima born in eighteen thirty seven, being
one of the three children resulting from the union. In
the Countess's relations with Lis, there appears to have been
a curious mingling of la grand passion and hauteur, for
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when soon after she had joined him in Switzerland he
urged at to secure a divorce in order that they
might marry, she drew herself up and replied, Madame la
Comtesse du Gault Nacier de Gameis, Madame List, Certainly, none
but a frenchwoman would have been capable of such a
reply under the same circumstances. Equally French, was her husband's remark.
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When the Countess's support having been assumed by List, he
expressed the opinion that throughout the whole affair, the pianists
had behaved like a man of honor. After the separation
of List and the Countess de Gault, he entrusted the
care of the three children to his mother. During a
brief sojourn in Paris, Wagner met Cossimer, then a girl
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of sixteen, for the first time. She formed with List,
von Bulo, Burlios, and a few others the very small
but extremely select audience which at the house of List's
mother heard Wagner read selections from his Nibelung dramas in
eighteen fifty five. The burden of the care of the
children falling too heavily upon Lists, the duty of looking
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after the daughters was cheerfully undertaken by the mother of
Hans von Bulloh, who resided in Berlin. In a letter
written by von Buloh in June eighteen fifty six, he
speaks of them in these interesting terms. These wonderful girls
bear their name with right, full of talent, cleverness and life.
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They are interesting personalities, such as I have rarely met
another than I would be happy in their companionship. But
their evident superiority annoys me, and the impossibility to appear
sufficiently interesting to them prevents my appreciating the pleasure of
their society as much as I would like to. There,
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you have a confession the canter, which you will not deny.
It is not very flattering for a young man, but
it is absolutely true. Yet a year later he married Cossima,
one of the girls whose superiority so annoyed him. How
strange in view of what happened later that von Buloh
so planned his wedding trip that its main objective was
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a visit to Zurich in order that he might present
Cosima to Wagner, who had not seen us since she
had formed one of his audience at the Rhinegold Reading
in Paris. It is in a letter to his friend
Richard Pohle, written the day before his wedding, that von
Buloh mentions that Wagnerstadt Zurich as the aim of his
wedding journey. Was it fate or fatality that led him thither?
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With Cossima, the daughter of Liszt, the bride of von Buloh,
being conducted on her honeymoon to the very lair of
the great composer for whom she was within a few
years to leave her husband. What wonderful musical links destiny
wove in the life of this woman, who herself was
not a musician. Hans and Cosimo arrived at Zurich early
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in September for the last fortnight. Writes from Bulau under
data say September the nineteenth, eighteen fifty seven. I and
my wife have been living in Wagner's house, and I
didn't know anything else that could have afforded me such benefit,
such refreshment as being together with this wonderful, unique man,
whom I should worship as a god. On his side,
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Wagner was charmed with the von Bulohs. In one of
his letters, he speaks of their visit as his most
delightful experience of the summer. They spent three weeks in
our little house. I have really been so pleasantly and
delightfully affected as by their informal visit. In the mornings
they had to keep quiet, for I was writing my Tristan,
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at which I read them and act aloud every week.
If you knew Cousimer, you would agree with me when
I concluded that this young pair is wonderfully well mated.
With all their great intelligence and real artistic sympathy, there
is something so light and buoyant in the two young
people that one was obliged to feel perfectly at home
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with them. Wagner allowed them to depart only under promise
that they would return next year, which they did to
find a household on the verge of disruption and to
be unwilling witnesses to some of the closing scenes of
Wagner's first marriage. During her childhood in Paris, Cossimer was
frail and delicate. Liszt, in one of his letters, confesses
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that this caused him to regard her with a deeper
affection than he bestowed on her elder sister. Later, he
speaks of her as a rare and beautiful nature, of
great and spontaneous charm. A friend of Liszt, who saw
her at the Altenburg in eighteen sixty, writes that she
was a pale, slender when and thin to a degree,
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and that she crept through the room like a shadow.
This was greatly concerned about her, for the year previous,
her brother Daniel had died of consumption, and he feared
she might be stricken with the same malady. Daniel's death
was a sad experience through which they passed together and
which strengthened the ties of tenderness that drew list to
(28:06):
his younger daughter. The son died in his father's arms,
and in her presence she had nursed him devotedly in
his last illness. Cossimer tells me this wrote before he
had seen Daniel on his sick bed, that the color
of his beard and of his hair has taken on
a touch of brownish red, as he looks like a
(28:27):
christ by Correggio. Together, after Daniel's death, they knelt beside
his bed, praying to God that his will be done,
and that he reconcile us with that divine will in
according us the grace on our part to accept it
without a murmur. Such a scene was a memory for
a lifetime. Cosima herself, in one of her letters, gives
(28:48):
a beautiful description of a brother's passage from life. He
fell back into the arms of death, as into those
of a guardian angel from whom he had been waiting
a long time. There was no struggle without a distasteful life.
He seemed, nevertheless, to have aspired ardently towards eternity with
(29:10):
a pretty touch. Liszt gives an idea of Cosima's interest
in others. It seems that a certain frow Stilk was
anxious to possess a gray dress of moi antique, and
List had persuaded the Princess Saint Witttenstein to place the
necessary sum for buying it at his daughter's disposal in
order to estimate the cost, He writes, Cosette has devised
(29:34):
this excellent formula. It should be addressed such as one
would give to persons who want a dress. Only it
is necessary that it should be gray and of moi
antique to satisfy the ideal of taste of the person
in question. Vardner does not seem to have seen Cosma
after the Vonboulu's second visit to him at Zurich, until
(29:55):
they came to him for a visit at Bibasch during
the summer of eighty sixty two. What a contrast Cosima
must have seen to poor Mina, who, in the same
house and but a short time before, had desecrated the
manuscript of De Meister Singer by allowing a bred ball
to roll over it. Wagner's favorite opinion of hands and
(30:16):
Cosima underwent a great change during their sojourn with him.
In a letter, after speaking of von Bulou's depression owing
to poor health. He writes, add to this a tragic
marriage a young woman of extraordinary, quite unprecedented endowment, lists
wonderful image, but of superior intellect. That this woman, who
(30:38):
so impressed Wagner, was in her turn filled with admiration
for his gifts appears from two letters which during the
summer of eighteen sixty two she wrote from Biebrick to
her father. In one of these she speaks enthusiastically of
some of the Tristan music. The other letter concerns De
meister Singer. The meister Singer is to Wagner, as other conceptions,
(31:01):
what though Winter's Tale is to Shakespeare's other works. Its
fantasy is founded on gaiety and drollery, and it has
called up the Nuremberg of the Middle Ages, with its guilds,
its poet artisans, its pedants, its cavaliers, to draw forth
the freshest laughter in the midst of the highest, the
most ideal poetry. It is evident that two souls so
(31:26):
sympathetic could not long remain in proximity without craving a
closer union. Coming events cast their shadows before, remarks one
who was often present during the Beiberick visit of the
von Bulohs to Wagner. How deeply Cosmo sympathized with Wagner's
aims even then is shown by another episode of this visit.
(31:51):
One evening, the composer outlined to his friends his plans
were Passifal, adding that it probably would be his last work.
The Little Circle was deeply affected and Cosima wept strange prescience.
Parsifal was not produced until twenty years later, yet it
proved to be the final of Wagner's life's labors. The
(32:14):
incident has interest from another point of view. It shows
that Wagner had his plans for Parsifal fairly matured in
eighteen sixty two, that it was not, as some critics
who see in it a decadence of his powers, claim,
a late afterthought designed to give to Byroid a curiosity
somewhat after the facon of the Oberamagau passion play decadence.
(32:38):
Henry T. Fink, the most consistent and eloquent champion Wagner
has had in America, sees in it no falling off
in the composer's genius, nor do I. Wagner scores always
fully voice his dramas passival as completely as any. The
subject simply required different musical treatment from the heroic ring
(33:00):
of the Nebulum and the impassioned Tristan. In a letter
written by Wagner in June eighteen sixty four, 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
(33:21):
and of devotion to his art. Since I last saw
you in Munich, Wagner writes to a friend, I have
not again left my asylum, which in the meantime also
has become the refuge of her, who was destined to
prove that I could well be helped, and that the
axiom of my many friends that I could not be
helped was false. She knew that I could be helped,
(33:45):
and has helped me. She has defied every disapprobation and
takes upon herself every condemnation. This was written in June
eighteen seventy, a year after Cosima had borne him Siegfried,
and two months before their marriage. For August eighteen seventy,
the following announcement was sent out. We have the honor
to announce our marriage, which took place on the twenty
(34:07):
fifth of August of this year in the Protestant church
in Lucerne. Richard Wagner Cossima Wagner nay List August twenty fifth,
eighteen seventy. When in eighteen eighty two I attended the
first performance of passerfal In by Roight, I had frequent
opportunity of seeing Wagner and Frau Cossimer. Probably the best
(34:31):
view I had of them together and of France List
at the same time, was at a dinner given by
Wagner to the artists who took part in the performances.
It was in one of the restaurants near the theatre on
the hill overlooking by Roight. Wagner's entrance upon the scene
was highly theatrical. All the singers and a few other
guests had been seated, and List, Frau Cosima and Siegfried
(34:54):
Wagner were in their places when the door opened and
in shot Wagner. It was as well calculated as the
entrance of the star in a play. On his way
to his seat, he stopped and chatted a few moments
with this one and that one. Instead of Wagner sitting
at the head of the table and his wife at
the foot. They sat together in the middle. It seemed
(35:17):
impossible for him, though, to remain seated more than a
few minutes at a time, and he was jumping up
and down and running about the table all through the banquet.
On the other side of Wagner sat List. On the
other side of Frau Cosima, Siegfried Wagner, then still a boy.
Among the four, there were two pairs of likenesses. Liszt
(35:37):
was gray. But although Fraul Cosimo's hair was blonde and
her face smooth and fair, as compared with the father's,
which was furrowed with age and boldly aquiline, she was
his child in every liniment. Moreover, the quick responsive lighting
up of the features, her graceful bearing, her tact that
these were inherited from him. A brief vaillance of the
(36:01):
two sufficed to disclose. Combining with these fascinating but after
all more or less superficial characteristics, was the stamp of
a rare intellectual force on both faces. No one seeing
them together needed to be told that Cosima was a List,
nor did anyone need to be told that Siegfried was
(36:21):
a Wagner. The boy was as much like his father
as his mother was like hers. Feature for feature, Wagner
was reproduced in his son. That there should be no
trace of the mother, and such a mother in the
boy's face struck me as remarkable, but there was none.
Siegfried Wagner was a veritable pocket edition of his famous father.
(36:43):
His later photographs as a young man show that much
of this likeness has disappeared. After dinner there were speeches. Wagner,
his hand resting affectionately on Li's shoulder, paid a feeling
tribute to the man who had befriended him early in
his career, and who had given him the precious wife
at his side. I remember, as if it had been
(37:04):
but last night, the tenderness with which he spoke the
words in d there Gattin. It was a wonderful two
or three hours that banquet, with the numerous notabilities present,
and at least two great men list In Wagner, and
one great woman, the daughter of List and the wife
of Wagner. And the experience is to be treasured all
(37:27):
the more because few of those present saw Wagner again.
Early in the following year, he died at Venice. He
is buried in the garden back of Varnfried his Byrot Villa.
He was a great lover of animals, and at his
burial his two favorite dogs, Votin and Mark, burst through
the bushes that surround the grave and join the mourners.
(37:49):
One of these pets is buried near him, and on
the slab is the inscription. Here lies in peace Vanfried's
faithful watcher and friend, the good and handsome Mark. What
Cosima was to Wagner is best told in less words
written to a friend after a visit to Byrot in
eighteen seventy two, when his favorite child had been married
(38:12):
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 sent her to the flying Dutchman,
(38:36):
and she will prove his salvation because he listens to
her and follows her with keen perception that by Roight,
with Wagner's death, did not become a mere tradition that
the Wagner performances still continue, there is due to fowl. Cosima.
She is by Roight. No woman has made such an
(38:57):
impression on the music of her time as she. Yet
she is not a musician. End of Chapter seven recording
by Peter Tomlinson. End of The Loves of Great Composers
by Gustave Coby
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