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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
In most of Wagner's music dramas the source material, generally deep-rooted in Germanic or Celtic tradition, is well known, and Wagner's ndebtedness is transparent. The four works composing Der Ring des Nibelungen, for example, are based chiefly on the Volsunga saga and the Nibelungenlied. Similarly, Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival was the inspiration for Wagner's Parsifal, and the Tristan of Gottfried von Strassburg was followed closely in Tristan und Isolde. These mediaeval works are epic monuments of western European legend or chefs d‘œuvre of the Minnesingers’ art. Wagner has thus ambitiously concerned himself with subjects of impressive grandeur, drawn from sources of no inconsiderable importance.
1 By 1483 the song was well known in Germany. Father Felix Faber, writing in that year of his travels in the Near East, alluded to the unholy worship of Venus, and the rumor that Dame Venus held court in a mountain not far from Rome. His reference to a poem which he said was familiar to the populace throughout Germany clearly relates to a version of the Tannhäuserlied: “Unde de hoc carmen confictum habetur, quod manifeste a vulgo per Alemanniam canitur de quodam nobili Suevo, quern nominant Danhuser, de Danhusen villa prope Dûnckelspùchel. Hunc fingunt ad tempus in monte cum Venere fuisse, et cum poenitentia ductus Papae fuisset confessus, denegata fuit sibi absolutio, et ita regressus in montem nusquam comparuit, et in deliciis vivit, ut dicunt, usque ad diem judicii.”—Evagatorium in Terrae Sanctae, Arabiae et Egypti Peregrinationem, ed. C. D. Hassler, Bibliothek des Literarischen Vereins in Stuttgart (1849), iv, 221.
See also P. S. Barto, Tannhäuser and the Mountain of Venus (New York, 1916), pp. 72 ff., and Wolfgang Golther, Zur deutschen Sage und Dichtung (Leipzig, 1911), for early parallels and references to the Tannhäuser story. The ballad was first printed in 1515, and numerous versions have appeared since that date. For the most important examples, see Erk-Böhme, Deutscher Liederhort (Leipzig, 1893), Nos. 17–18. Barto devotes his appendix to 32 versions, some of which are Swiss, Dutch, and Danish.
2 Of several editions of Der Wartburgkrieg, that of Simrock (1858) remains the most satisfactory. For an extended discussion of the poem and its background, see Alexandra von Schleinitz, Wagners Tannhäuser und Sängerkrieg auf der Wartburg (Meran, 1891).
3 This version of the story, from which others differ but slightly, is No. 17a in the Erk-Bohme Deutscher Liederhort. The two pertinent stanzas are quoted from Barto, p. 90.
4 For related stories, see Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (Indiana University Studies, xix–xxiii, 1932–36), Motif F 302.
5 Ibid., Motifs F 0–199.
6 Ibid., Motif D 2011.
7 Odyssey, 1, 5, 10.
8 F. J. Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Boston, 1883–98), I, 318 ff. 9 A. A. Afzelius, Volkssagen und Volkslieder aus Schwedens alterer und neuerer Zeit, German trans. F. H. Ungewitter (Leipzig, 1842), ii, 296–299.
10 See Thompson, Motif D 1960.2.
11 Child, i, 319–321; also Thompson, Motif 481.4.1.
12 See Karl Simrock, Handbuch der deutschen Mythologie (4th ed., Bonn, 1874), p. 148; Thompson, Motifs F 970–971.1.
13 See Alois Lütolf, Sagen, Bräuche und Legenden aus den fünf Orten (Lucerne, 1865), pp. 86 f.; Thompson, Motifs D 1960.2 and F 545.1.3.
14 Taschenbuch fiir Geschichte und Alterthum in Süddeutschland, ed. Heinrich Schreiber (Freiburg, 1839), pp. 348 ff.
15 See Thompson, Motif F 971.1; see also Motif Q 521.1 in relation to forgiveness symbols.
16 See Child, i, 96–99, for an extended discussion; see also Thompson, Motifs 631.0.1 and 86. 17 Afzelius, ii, 327–329.
18 Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsche Sagen (3d ed., Berlin, 1891), No. 356.
19 See Alexander H. Krappe, “Die Sage vom Tannhäuser,” Mitteilungen der Schlesischen Gesellschaft für Volkskunde, xxxvi (1936), 106–132, for a discussion of the development and migration of the Celtic story of Thomas Rhymer, which Krappe sees as the ultimate basis of the Tannhäuser saga. J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie (4th ed., Berlin, 1875–78), ii, 781 n., called attention to the Celtic parallels, but he considered the legend ultimately Teutonic. See Ernst Elster, Tannhäuser in Geschichte, Sage und Dichtung (Bromberg, 1908), for further comment on German origin, and especially pp. 8–10, for a discussion of anti-papal elements. Barto, pp. 72 ff., points out striking parallels in “Heer Daniel,” a Flemish song which he believes must underlie the Tannhäuser story; Krappe, pp. 122–123, considers the Flemish exemplar an intermediate step as the story passed from Britain to Germany.
20 The evidence points to the fifteenth century. See Barto, pp. 18 ff.; Golther, pp. 26–29. The conjecture of J. Grimm, ii, 780 and note, that Venusberg became current in the fourteenth century, though widely quoted (see references in Barto, p. 41), is inaccurate: the fourteenth-century Roman van Heinric en Margriete van Limborch, attributed to Hein van Aken (fl. 1280–1325), does not speak of Venusberg. The Middle Dutch romance does, however, contain a significant passage in which Heinric encounters a castle in “ene scone prayorie”; there Venus presides as a queen, and Heinric tarries in her midst for two years (ed. L. Ph. C. van den Bergh, Werken van de Maatschappij der Nederlandsche Letter-kunde te Leiden, n. s., 1846,ii, 167–173; see also 287–292). Here is a fourteenth-century association of Venus with the sojourn motif, but the context of the poem implies the classical goddess, without Germanic overtones.
21 Jessie L. Weston, The Legends of the Wagner Drama (London, 1896), p. 336.
22 Wagner made this point himself in a preface which appears in some editions of the Tannhäuser libretto : “Die altgermanische Göttin Holda, die f reundliche, milde und gnädige, deren jahrlicher Umzug durch das Land den Fluren Gedeihen und Fruchtbarkeit brachte, musste mit der Einfuhrung des Christentumes das Schicksal Wodans und aller übrigen Gotter teilen... Holda ward in unterirdische Höhlen, in das Innere von Bergen verwiesen... Später... ging ihr Name sogar in den der Venus über, an welchen sich aile Vorstel-lungen eines unseligen, zu böser, sinnlicher Lust verlockenden zauberischen Wesens unge-hinderter anknüpften....”—Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen, ed. Wolfgang Golther (Berlin, n. d.), x (Anmerkungen), 24. Here Wagner has followed the general ideas of J. Grimm's discussion in Deutsche Mythologie (Göttingen, 1835), pp. 523–524; 2nd ed. (Göttingen, 1844), ii, 887–888, either of which Wagner might have consulted. For an extended discussion see Barto, chap. ii.
23 See Barto, pp. 70–71, 103–108.
24 Friedrich Zander, Die Tanhäuser-Sage und der Minnesinger Tanhäuser (Königsberg, 1858), p. 31.
26 Johannes Siebert, Der Dichter Tannhäuser (Halle, 1934), p. 123. See also pp. 1–39 for a judicious discussion of the poet's life, and pp. 79–126 for a carefully edited text of the poems.
26 Siebert, p. 239, in discussing Pope Urban's connection with the Tannhäuser story, suggests that the cue could have come from Tannhäuser himself, who may have mentioned his name in one of the lost poems. This is an attractive but highly speculative conjecture. Whether or not the Pope's name appeared in a Tannhäuser poem, the chief reason for his association with the saga would arise from the contemporaneity of the two individuals. Only so long as this was felt might the two be linked in the story, unless we allow for coincidence; once they were associated, whether by literary or popular imagination, the story could of course be expected to follow familiar patterns of circulation and transformation. See also note 27, below.
27 “Geschichte der Tannhäusersage und Dichtung,” Tannhäuser-Buch zu den Bühnen-Festspiden 1891 (Sonderabdruck aus dem Bayreuther Taschenkalender, Berlin; 1891), p. 15. English translation from The Master, iv (1891), 34–35. The “Song of Penance” is “Das Busslied,” which has been attributed to Tannhàuser; it is reprinted in Siebert, pp. 207 ff.
Golther, Zur deutschen Sage und Dichtung (Leipzig, 1911), pp. 26 ff., reconsidered the history of the Tannhäuser story and repeated his general conclusions of 1891. He went on to suggest that the saga was not immediately a folk product, but rather that it originated in literary circles of the thirteenth century, where poets often celebrated their fellow artists in verse. This is of course conjecture. Of greater significance is the fact that, whatever the circumstances surrounding Tannhäuser's identification with an already familiar story, the subsequent circulation and extensive popularity of the Tannhäuser story were the result of folk “momentum.”
28 See note 1, above.
29 Hans Sachs, “Das Hoffgesindt Veneris,” Zwölf Fastnachtspiele aus den Jahren 1518 [sic]-1539, ed. Edmund Goetze (Neudrucke deutscher Litteraturwerke des xvi. und xvii. Jahrhunderts, Nos. 26–27, 1880), pp. 13–21.
30 Among the more recent treatments of the story may be mentioned those by Tieck and Heine, which are discussed below. C. M. von Weber contemplated an opera on Tannhäuser; later in the century Swinburne drew upon the story for his Laus Veneris. For a more detailed consideration, see Victor Junk, Tannhàuser in Sage und Dichtung (Munich, 1911) ; A. Öhlke, Zu Tannhäusers Leben und Dichten (Königsberg, 1890), pp. 2–5 ; Siebert, pp. 240–241, note.
31 For the relationship of the Wartburgkrieg to Lohengrin MS. “L” see Ernst Elster, “Beiträge zur Kritik des Lohengrin,” [Paul und Braune] Beitrdge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Liieratur, x (1884), 122, 189–194.
32 See Paul Riesenfeld, Heinrich von Ofterdingen in der deutschen Literatur (Berlin, 1912), in which, after exhaustive study of the evidence, no conclusions are reached on “whether, when and where he lived” (p. 6).
33 See, for example, Anton Ritter von Spaun, Heinrich von Ofterdingen und das Nibelungenlied (Linz, 1840), and critical remarks in Riesenfeld, pp. 4–5, 90–94.
34 Recalling that the Athenians followed a tragedy with a more cheerful “Satyr play,” Wagner says that he conceived Die Meistersinger similarly as a foil for his Tannhäuser (“Eine Mittheilung an meine Freunde,” prefacing Wagner's Drei Operndichtungen [Leipzig, 1852], p. 91). The plot of Die Meistersinger shows clearly Wagner's reaction to the wearying insipidities of minstrel song such as occur in the Sängerkrieg.
35 Ibid., p. 67.
88 These include letters to . B. Kietz, Sept. 6–10,1842 (unpublished: No. 123 in Catalog of the Burrell Collection of Wagner Documents [London, 1929]); to Albert Wagner, Dec. 3, 1842; May 17, June 14,1843 (Familienbriefe von Richard Wagner [Berlin, 1907]); to Minna Wagner, July 1, 1843 (Richard Wagner an Minna Wagner [Berlin, 1908]); to Anton Pusinelli, Aug. 1, 1843 (The Letters of Richard Wagner to Anton Pusinelli [New York, 1932]); and to Samuel Lehrs, Apr. 7, 1843, to Robert Schumann, May 12, Sept. 21, 1843, to Leo Herz, May 20, 1843, to Karl Gaillard, Jan. 30, 1844, June 5, 1845, to Cecilie Avenarius, July 28, 1844 (Letters of Richard Wagner, ed. Wilhelm Altmann [New York, 1927]).
37 “Über die Aufführung des Tannhäuser” (1852) and “Bericht über die Aufführung des Tannhäuser in Paris” (1861), Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen (4th ed., Leipzig, 1907), v, 159 ff.; vii, 181 ff,
38 “Eine Mittheilung an meine Freunde,” pp. 66–67; translation mine.
Wagner's account has not gone unchallenged. J. G. Robertson, “The Genesis of Wagner's Drama Tannhäuser,” M.L.R., xviii (1923), 458 ff., advanced the thesis that the essential plan of the opera belongs to the years before Wagner visited Paris (i.e., 1839 or earlier). Robertson concluded that the drama was originally conceived as a singers' tourney with Heinrich von Ofterdingen as the hero; the Tannhäuser motifs he believed were overlaid at an advanced stage in the preparation, even after some of the libretto had been written. But the publication of the Catalog of the Burrell Collection of Wagner Documents in 1929 disclosed the existence of Wagner's original sketch of the opera. The dates of beginning and completion—June 22, 1842, and July, 1842, respectively—confirm Wagner's own account in Mein Leben; and Wagner's sketch-title Venusberg must set aside Robertson's hypothesis of an original singers'-tourney plot.
39 Mein Leben (1911), i, 255.
40 Wagner's memory played him false when he stated in Mein Leben, I, 255, that Lucas' monograph contained the original text. Rather, it contained what was far more easily manageable by Wagner—a modern prose paraphrase of each strophe of the poem, and (as Wagner did remember correctly) an extended account of the contents of Lohengrin.
41 Das Leben Richard Wagners (3rd ed., Leipzig, 1894–1911), I, 360 n. It seems unlikely that Wagner could have mistaken for a chapbook such a work as the Grimms'.
42 “The Tannhäuser Drama,” The Meister, iv (1891), 37.
43 Riesenfeld, p. 85.
44 Robertson, p. 458.
45 Bechstein, Sagenschatz, i, 137.
46 Ibid. See also Siebert, p. 108, lines 112–117.
47 Sagenschatz, i, 141–145.
48 Still another suggestion is discussed and, I think, justly dismissed by Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner (London, 1933–46), ii, 32–33 n.; to him the problem of the Volksbuch can be laid aside as insoluble.
49 Lucas, Über den Krieg von Wartburg, pp. 270–273.
50 Note that Bechstein treats her career at length. See Sagenschatz, especially I, 56 ff.
51 Phantasus (Berlin, 1844), I, 235. Tieck speaks of a “Gewimmel der frohen heidnischen Gôtter,” with Venus at their head. And the revels are pointedly described: “Alle Freuden, die die Erde beut, genoss und schmeckte ich hier in ihrer vollsten Blüthe, unersättlich war mein Busen und unendlich der Genuss...” And Tieck's Tannenhäuser speaks of the beauties of the ancient world, of the costly wines, of a swarm of naked maidens surrounding him invitingly, of music bursting forth excitingly, and of the magical passing of time.
52 In Heine's Elementargeister, published in Der Salon, iii (1837), there appears not only Heine's own poem, but also a Tannhäuserlied which he reprinted from Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1805–1808). Wagner had earlier been indebted to Heine, for the plot of Der fliegende Holländer was drawn from the first volume of Der Salon.
53 For the alterations made by Wagner for the Paris performances, see Tannhäuser, ed. Max Hochkofler (Eulenburgs kleine Partitur-Ausgabe, Leipzig, n. d. [c. 1930]), ii: Varianten der Pariser Bearbeitung; Wolfgang Golther, “Richard Wagners französische und deutsche Tannhäuserdichtung,” Zur deutschen Sage und Dichtung (Leipzig, 1911), pp. 71–84; and Sebastian Roeckl, “Richard Wagners vollständiger poetischer Entwurf zum Ballet im Tannhäuser in der Pariser Bearbeitung,” Die Musik, iv (Feb., 1905), 250–253.
54 Robertson, pp. 465–466, has pointed out Wagner's indebtedness not merely to Heine's “Ich schmachte nach Bitternissen” (from his ballad, 1.24), but also to Tieck's more elaborate statement of Tannhäuser's discontent: “... mich nun in aller Sünderherrlichkeit der Trieb nach der Ruhe, der Wunsch zur alten unschuldigen Erde mit ihren dürftigen Freuden eben so ergrifi... Es zog mich an, wieder jenes Leben zu leben, das die Menschen in aller Bewusstlosigkeit führen, mit Leiden und abwechselnden Freuden; ich war von dem Glanz gesattigt und suchte gern die vorige Heimath wieder. Eine unbegreifliche Gnade des All-mächtigen verschaffte mir die Rückkehr...” —Phantasus, i, 236.
55 Wagner's return to Dresden in April, 1842, only three months before he began to sketch the opera, took him through the Thuringian mountains, where he caught sight of the Wartburg. In Mein Leben, I, 263, he recalled christening a neighboring ridge the Hörselberg, amid a feeling of deep emotion. Thus Wagner accounted for the setting of I, iii; in the same passage he stated that upon seeing a nearby valley he pictured the scene for the beginning of Act m of Tannhäuser, which is actually the same as that of i, iii.
66 In the summer of 1842, while sketching Tannhäuser in the Bohemian mountains, Wagner heard a shepherd whistling a dance tune on a hillside; the scene suggested the rôle he later gave the shepherd in the opera. The boy's melody he could not remember: “therefore,” he said, “I had to help myself out in the usual way.”—Mein Leben, I, 270–271.
57 The Serapion Brethren (London, 1886), i, 294–295.
58 Ibid., pp. 300–301. Wagner has transferred to Tannhäuser the suggestion made by Hoffmann (pp. 304, 305, 311) that Wolfram through his songs has “found favor” in Mathilda's eyes.
69 Robertson, p. 462, attributes the structure of Wagner's second act, and of Elisabeth's part in it, to F. de la Motte Fouqué's play Der Sängerkrieg auf der Wartburg (1828). A scene in the Wartburg garden between Heinrich von Ofterdingen and Sophia Biterolf (first Abenteuer) may have suggested the first two scenes of Wagner's second act; but essentially the structure is that of the original Wartburgkrieg. The content of Wagner's two scenes follows almost inevitably from the assumptions of Act I; and Wagner has secured greater dramatic intensity by laying these scenes in the tournament hall rather than in a more romantic garden setting.
60 In Fouqué's Sängerkrieg, the preparations for the tourney in the second Abenteuer parallel the “business” of Tannhäuser, ii, iv, as Robertson, pp. 462–163, has pointed out.
61 In Hoffmann, p. 335, the Marshal passes a silver cup and the singers draw lots. As in Tannhäuser, the lots establish Wolfram as Heinrich's opponent.
62 Cf. ibid., p. 313, where Heinrich sulks impatiently while Wolfram sings in praise of the Landgrave. Then Heinrich sings in an unprecedented manner; “forms as of voluptuous love-passion glowed in the opened Eden of the pleasures of sense.” Again, p. 335, Heinrich sings of the “animalism of life,” as he had learned the song from Nasias, an infernal spirit.
83 See note 55, above.
64 Hoffmann, p. 337, describes a similar scene for a meeting between Mathilda and Wolfram; but there the similarity ends, for whereas Hoffmann's lovers are blissful, Wagner has developed the scene with unrelieved pathos. Only as Elisabeth departs does Wolfram approach and offer to accompany her to the castle. Her response is entirely pantomime, as the stage direction specifies: “sie danke ihm und seiner treuen Liebe aus vollem Herzen; ihr Weg fuhre sie aber gen Himmel, wo sie ein hohes Amt zu verrichten habe; er solle sie daher ungeleitet gehen lassen, ihr auch nicht folgen.”
65 Although no source need be sought for Wagner's “O du, mein holder Abendstern,” it is interesting to note that Hoffmann, pp. 295, 299, 302, 303, frequently symbolized ideal love in terms of “a golden star,” “the marvelous star,” and the like.
66 Tannhäuser's rôle throughout the last act of the opera follows the Tannhäuserlied, except as it must be modified by the redemption theme uppermost in Wagner's mind. With Wagner's description of the returning pilgrim, “er tragt zerrissene Pilgerkleidung, sein Antlitz ist bleich und entstellt; er wankt matten Schrittes an seinem Stabe,” compare Tieck's handling of the same details: “Einige Monden waren verflossen, als der Tannenhäuser bleich and abgezehrt, in zerrissenen Wallfahrtskleidern und barfuss in Friedrichs Gemach trat.”—Phantasus, I, 237.
67 In the original version of the opera, Venus did not return to the stage in the third act.
68 “Über die Aufführung des Tannhäuser,” Gesammelte Schriften, v, 195.