The Sorcerer of Bayreuth by Millington Barry;

Author:Millington, Barry;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press USA - OSO

Isolde, consoled by King Mark, grieves over the body of Tristan; illustration by Franz Stassen. (Hessische Hausstiftung, Kronberg, Schlossmuseum Darmstadt)

18‘Art is What Matters Here’: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

All is not German that does not glitter.

Ludwig Marcuse

Not the least of the ironies concerning Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is that this colossal work of art should have been conceived essentially as a displacement activity. It happened during the summer holiday-cum-rest cure Wagner took at the Marienbad spa in 1845 (see Chapter 4: Under the Yoke), and Wagner was under strict instructions from his doctors to desist from engaging in creative activity. His bathtime reading, however, proved to be more than usually stimulating, and to pacify his doctors he ‘struggled manfully against the temptation’ to flesh out the scenario for Lohengrin that had taken shape in his mind, occupying himself instead with a completely different subject:

From a few remarks in Gervinus’s History of German Literature I had fashioned for myself a vivid picture of the mastersingers of Nuremberg and of Hans Sachs. I was particularly intrigued by the institution of the ‘Marker’ and by his function vis-à-vis the mastersingers in general. Without knowing anything more about Sachs or the other poets of his period, I invented during one of my walks an amusing scene in which the cobbler, as popular artisan poet, teaches the Marker a lesson, with blows of his hammer on the last, by making him sing, thereby wreaking revenge on him for his pedantic misdeeds. For me everything was concentrated on two points: on the one hand the presentation by the Marker of the slate covered with chalk marks, and on the other, the image of Sachs holding aloft the shoes completed by his own marking of the Marker. Each in this way delivers his own verdict on the singing.1

There is a tender moment in the fourth scene of Act II of Die Meistersinger as Eva and Sachs are discussing the possible candidates for the song competition the following day. Though hoping that her beloved Walther will take the prize, and with it her hand, she and the widower Sachs briefly entertain the possibility that they could have been joined in matrimony, despite the gap in their ages. When Sachs suggests that he is too old for her, Eva delphically remarks that ‘art is what matters here’ (‘Hier gilt’s der Kunst’). The teasing implication is that she would happily consent to Sachs if he were to win by the rules: their evident affection for each other is clear from the A flat tonality of this passage(a key frequently associated in Wagner’s works with the blossoming of love) and the markings sehr zart (very tender), dolce and dolcissimo.

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