My Life — Volume 1

Wagner’s hack work multiplies: Pillet does not reply for months, so Wagner works on Rienzi and interrupts for Gazette assignments. Schlesinger makes him write a cornet à pistons method, gives him five existing methods to cobble into a sixth, then releases him and orders 14 cornet suites arranged from 60 piano opera scores, which Wagner marks and arranges around his worktable for easy access. Mid-work, cornet player Schlitz declares Wagner knows nothing about the instrument, uses keys too high for Parisian players, keeps the work he did complete only if Wagner shares the fee with him, and takes the rest of the assignment off his hands, leaving Wagner broke again. By November 19, he finishes the voluminous Rienzi, and decides to offer it to the Dresden Court Theatre, where he has contacts: tenor Tichatschek is perfect for the lead, Schröder-Devrient tried for years to get his Feen produced there, theatre secretary Hofrat Winkler is an old family friend, and conductor Reissiger an old acquaintance. He writes appeals to director Lüttichau and the King of Saxony, and sends the score off. To mark tempi, he borrows a metronome, and one foggy morning goes to return it, chasing his stolen dog Robber through misty streets after the animal recognizes him but flees memories of past chastisements, losing him near St. Roch, heartbroken and seeing it as a bad omen. His day of money-raising goes no better: he begs his brother-in-law Heinrich Brockhaus for help and is rejected, waits hours at Schlesinger’s office with no success, and goes home after dark to find Minna has borrowed a little from Brix to make him a meal.

The final blow comes as Donizetti’s La Favorita becomes a Parisian sensation, and Schlesinger, who lost heavily on Halevy’s recent operas, sees a chance to profit. He bursts into the Wagners’ flat beaming, and offers Wagner 500 francs upfront, 1100 total, to arrange the full La Favorita score for piano, piano without words, duet, quartet, two violins, and cornet à piston. Wagner takes the work, treats the humiliating hack job as a penance for his past artistic sins, and he and Minna move all their possessions into their bedroom to save fuel, using it as living, dining, and study space, stepping from bed to worktable in a single stride, only leaving the flat every four days for a short walk. The strain gives him gastric disorders that will plague him for the rest of his life. He corrects the La Favorita score, earning an extra 300 francs from Schlesinger when no one else will do the work, copies out the Faust Overture orchestra parts still hoping for a Conservatoire performance, and writes the short story Une Visite à Beethoven (A Pilgrimage to Beethoven) for the Gazette, which becomes a sensation reprinted in fireside journals. Schlesinger makes him write a sequel, Un Musicien étranger à Paris, where he avenges himself on his Parisian struggles; Heine says Hoffmann could not have written it, and Berlioz praises the story and later gives Wagner a sign of sympathy after he publishes an essay on overtures citing Gluck’s Iphigenia in Aulis as a model.

Wagner has long admired Berlioz’s orchestral mastery, having heard him conduct Romeo and Juliet three times the previous winter; the bold precision of Berlioz’s combinations overwhelms him, pushing his own musical ideas down, and while he finds Romeo and Juliet shallow in parts, its bewitching passages override his objections. He is equally impressed by the Sinfonie Fantastique and Harold en Italie, and Berlioz’s Grande Symphonie Funèbre et Triomphale, conducted under the Place de la Bastille column for the July Revolution heroes’ anniversary, thoroughly convinces him of Berlioz’s unique, enterprising genius. But Berlioz’s works leave him with a strange, unplaceable sensation: he is ravished by them, but also repelled and wearied, a puzzle he cannot solve for years, feeling like a schoolboy next to the master. When Schlesinger arranges a Gazette concert, Wagner has no suitable original works, and with only one rehearsal for the second-rate Valentino orchestra, he falls back on his early Columbus Overture, cutting the required six cornets to four, with only two reliable players. At the February 4, 1841 performance, the audience, largely made up of Gazette subscribers who know his writing, is well-disposed at first, but the failed cornet players ruin the work’s key passages, and the Parisian audience, which only cares about skilful difficult tone production, turns hostile. Wagner knows he has failed completely; Paris no longer exists for him, and he returns to his bedroom to resume arranging La Favorita, growing a long beard for the first time like a penitent. His neighbour, a piano teacher, practices Liszt’s Lucia fantasy all day, so Wagner moves his out-of-tune piano against the party wall and has Brix play his Favorita Overture arrangement on flute while he accompanies, driving the neighbour to move out soon after. The concierge’s wife used to do their housework, but they can no longer afford her, so Minna does all the housework herself, even cleaning Brix’s boots, and the concierge respects them more for their grit, reassuring Wagner when the Quadruple Alliance against France is formed that the four monarchs are all fools and war will not come.

Small social diversions break up the misery: on New Year’s Eve 1840, his friends throw him a surprise party, Lehrs bringing veal, Kietz rum and lemon, Pecht a goose, Anders two rare bottles of champagne, and they prepare supper together, drink punch, and Wagner gives a fiery speech from the table praising the South American Free States so wild the guests laugh and cry so much they have to stay the night. When the famous violinist Vieux-temps, Kietz’s old schoolfriend, visits, he plays for them the whole evening, and Kietz carries him on his shoulders back to his hotel. A careless mistake with their landlady ruins their last hope to escape the Rue du Helder flat: they give notice to vacate a day too late, and are liable for a full year’s rent, the sick, crippled agent refusing to release them. Easter comes, they cannot pay, so the concierge finds a family to take over their flat and furniture for a few months, covering the rent, and they move to a cheap summer apartment in Meudon on the avenue to Bellevue on April 29, with no idea how they will survive the summer.