Richard Wagner's Beethoven

227 Pages·2014·4.025 MB·English

by  Richard Wagner, Roger Allen

R W ’ R W ’
ICHARD AGNER S ICHARD AGNER S
Beethoven R Beethoven
I
C
H
A
R
(1870) D
W
A NEW TRANSLATION
A
G (1870)
Despite the enormous and accelerating worldwide interest in Wagner leading to N
E
the bicentenary of his birth in 2013, his prose writings have received scant
R
scholarly attention. Wagner’s book-length essay on Beethoven, written to ’S
celebrate the centenary of Beethoven’s birth in 1870, is really about Wagner B
himself rather than Beethoven. It is generally regarded as the principal aesthetic
statement of the composer’s later years, representing a reassessment of the ideas
of the earlier Zurich writings, especially Oper und Drama, in the light of the e
experience gained through the composition of Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger
e
von Nürnbergand the greater part of Der Ring des Nibelungen. It contains Wagner’s
most complete exegesis of his understanding of Schopenhauer’s philosophy and t
its perceived influence on the compositional practice of his later works. The essay h
also influenced the young Nietzsche. It is an essential text in the teaching of not
o
only Wagnerian thought but also late nineteenth-century musical aesthetics in
general.
v
Until now the English reader with no access to the German original has been
e
obliged to work from two Victorian translations. This brand new edition gives
the German original and the newly translated English text on facing pages. It n
comes along with a substantial introduction placing the essay not only within
the wider historical and intellectual context of Wagner’s later thought but also
(
1
in the political context of the establishment of the German Empire in the 1870s. 8
7
The translation is annotated throughout with a full bibliography. Richard Wagner’s
0
Beethoven will be indispensable reading for historians and musicologists as well )
as those interested in Wagner’s philosophy and the aesthetics of music.
ROGER ALLEN is Fellow and Tutor in Music at St Peter’s College, Oxford.
A
LLEN
Cover illustration: Portrait of Richard Wagner, Franz von Lenbach (1874). Ludwig II
Museum. C. Bayerische Schlösserverwaltung
A NEW TRANSLATION
an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge IP12 3DF (GB) and R A
OGER LLEN
668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620-2731 (US)
www.boydellandbrewer.com
All use subject to https://about.
Richard Wagner’s
Beethoven (1870)
A New Translation
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‘Foreword’ from Richard Wagner’s autograph, Nationalarchiv der
Richard-Wagner-Stiftung, Bayreuth, NA B II d 7, pp. 1–2.
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Richard Wagner’s
Beethoven (1870)
Newly Translated and
with an Introduction by
Roger Allen
the boydell press
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© Roger Allen 2014
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,
transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner
The right of Roger Allen to be identified as
the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published 2014
The Boydell Press, Woodbridge
ISBN 978 1 84383 958 3
The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA
website: www.boydellandbrewer.com
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for
external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee
that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
This publication is printed on acid-free paper
Typeset by BBR, Sheffield
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Dedicated to the memory of
Brian Hitch
With affection and gratitude
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Contents
ix Preface and Acknowledgements
xiii A Note on the Translation and Sources
xv List of Abbreviations
1 Introduction
29 Richard Wagner’s Beethoven (German text and
English translation)
201 Appendix: ‘Beethoven u[nd] d[ie] deutsche
Nation’ (German text)
203 Select Bibliography
211 Index
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Preface and Acknowledgements
It is a received commonplace that Wagner’s prose works are difficult
of access to the English reader. The entire corpus exists in trans-
lation only in the late Victorian version prepared by William Ashton
Ellis. Although it is fashionable to denigrate Ellis for the prolixity
of his rendering of Wagner’s prose into English, it must be said in
his defence that his often convoluted syntax and arcane vocabulary
come close to replicating that of the original German. Whatever its
faults may or may not be, Ashton Ellis’s work represents a formidable
achievement for which the English-speaking student of Wagner’s
ideas must remain ever grateful.
Beethoven (1870) has been better served for the English reader than
most of Wagner’s prose works: it also exists in an undated pre-Ellis
translation by Wagner’s advocate in England Eduard Dannreuther,
and there is a substantial extract elegantly and imaginatively translated
by Martin Cooper in 1988.1 This present version originated as a series
of discrete excerpts prepared as supporting material for tutorial
teaching at Oxford. There was no initial intention to translate the
entire essay. The impulse to do so came from the late Brian Hitch,
a retired diplomat with astonishing linguistic skills supported by a
profound knowledge of music and boundless generosity with his time.
For nearly two years we met weekly and pitted our collective wits
1 Richard Wagner, extract from Beethoven, trans. Martin Cooper, in Music
in European Thought 1851–1912, ed. Bojan Bujić (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988), pp. 65–75.
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x Preface and Acknowledgements
against Wagner’s often intransigent text. To Brian must go the credit
for unravelling some of Wagner’s more impenetrable syntax with
imperturbable patience and unfailing good humour. This translation
is dedicated with affection and gratitude to his memory.
There can be no doubt that Beethoven is an essential text in
understanding the musical, philosophical and poetic ideas that
nourished the dramas of Wagner’s maturity and the historical context
in which they were created. The Victorian translations of Ashton
Ellis and Dannreuther both capture a good deal of the time-specific
character of the original through faithful adherence (where possible)
to Wagner’s syntax and direct transcription of vocabulary, but result
in a dense prose style that is off-putting and often difficult to navigate.
For this reason alone there is an evident need for a modern version to
serve the ever-growing community of not necessarily expert but intel-
lectually curious readers who would understand more of Wagner’s
creative processes, the historical context in which he was working, and
the reasons why the works of a nineteenth-century musical dramatist
continue to exercise an ever-growing fascination across such a broad
cultural spectrum.
The seeds of this work were sown long ago by Dr Michael
Nicholas, whose inspirational teaching instilled in me as a schoolboy
in Northampton a lifelong love of Wagner. Sue Palmer patiently and
with limitless good humour taught me German as a rather indolent
and ponderous mature student in my early days in Oxford. My Oxford
mentors Dr Bojan Bujić and Professor Peter Franklin, my Wagnerian
colleagues Barry Millington and Lionel Friend, together with under-
graduate and graduate students past and present, kept up a uniform
and gentle pressure which, when I was not self-moving, nevertheless
convinced me that this project might have a wider interest beyond
the confines of tutorial teaching. Professor Hilda Meldrum Brown
has been unfailingly generous with her time in advising on linguistic
issues arising from the transcription and editing of the German
text, checking the translation and generally sharing her matchless
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Preface and Acknowledgements xi
expertise and profound knowledge of nineteenth-century German
literature and culture. I am grateful to the Master, Mark Damazer,
and my colleagues the Fellows of St Peter’s College, Oxford, whose
collegiate support and granting of the necessary sabbatical leave
made it possible to bring this project to completion.
This project was generously supported by a Small Research
Grant from the British Academy. This funded a fine-tooth-comb
checking of the translation by Dr Barbara Eichner who identified
many of the broader cultural and historical resonances in Wagner’s
text that appear in the references. Dr Eichner also proofread the
transcription of the German text from Wagner’s autograph and gave
invaluable feedback on an early draft of the Introduction and on
the progress of the project in general. The detailed and scrupulous
work of Dr Eichner is gratefully acknowledged. I am indebted to the
two anonymous reviewers who took such care with the first draft of
the translation and who gave the helpful feedback and constructive
criticisms that were so useful in the process of revision; also to
Michael Middeke, Commissioning Editor for Boydell & Brewer
for his consistent encouragement. Lastly, my grateful thanks to the
distinguished scholar Dr Margaret Bent, whose profound knowledge
of Wagner and enthusiastic partnership in playing transcriptions of
the mature Wagner operas for piano duet on a more or less weekly
basis over the past thirteen years has so immeasurably enhanced my
levels of engagement with all things Wagnerian.
The frontispiece is reproduced by kind permission of the National
Archive of the Richard Wagner Foundation, Bayreuth (NA B II d 7).
The ready assistance of Dr Sven Friedrich and Dr Gudrun Föttinger
of the Richard Wagner Museum, Bayreuth in providing facsimiles
of Wagner’s working draft and fair copy of Beethoven together with
permission to publish is gratefully acknowledged. The cover portrait
of Richard Wagner by Franz von Lenbach (1874) is reproduced
by kind permission of the Ludwig II Museum c. Bayerische
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