Wagner: Tannhäuser – Musicological Analysis & Feminist Critique

‘The women cast their frigidity into the ears of all men with their top Cs, while the men dream themselves out of everyday marital boredom into a seven-year holiday of boundless pleasure at the Venusberg—even if a hangover is lurking just round the corner. How sultry it all is, what a potage of overcooked, pulverized lust!’ Carl von Ossietzky’s sharp criticism of Tannhäuser was matched by Thomas Mann on hearing the Venusberg music on the radio: ‘A thoroughly sexual product at the close, with moist glances oozing through the hypocritical yearnings of the Pilgrim’s Chorus. Romanticism is an unclean world. I don’t want to hear of it any more’. And Ernst Bloch wrote of the work’s ‘glitter of a high-class brothel, with a rose of hell’. Tannhäuser prompted critics to salacious comments right from the very start, and during his lifetime Wagner himself experienced extreme reactions to the work. At one rehearsal, even his patron Otto Wesendonck found fault with its ‘lascivious tones’, and Wagner joked that Otto was probably scared he might have dangled them in front of his wife Mathilde. But there were also contrary voices, who criticized Tannhäuser’s love of Elisabeth as unworldly. Wagner found this ludicrous: ‘How absurd these critics must seem to me, who in their modern wantonness have become so ingenious. They want to interpret my Tannhäuser as specifically Christian and impute to him a tendency to impotent glorification!’ Wagner had to defend himself on all sides, whether against accusations of sexual excess or chastity.

Upon first approaching the work, one might assume that it was written in the traditions of the Enlightenment and Romanticism. As Hans Mayer has remarked, the contrast between bourgeois virginal dignity and the libertine tendencies of female nobility was a characteristic feature of the bourgeois Enlightenment. We see it over and over again in the novels and plays of Gellert, Richardson, Lessing and others. At first glance, it seems as if Elisabeth is the typically strait-laced, pious, domestic woman, who remains subject to her man throughout her life. Venus on the other hand is, in this interpretation, the evil femme fatale, feared by men because she enchants them only to enslave them. But it is all rather more complex than this. Wagner was probably inspired in part by the discussions of sexuality that were popular at the time of the Young Germany movement, and that will have led him to ponder the hypocrisy prevalent in all matters erotic.

He had determined that the prophetess ‘could not become a woman again’—in other words, she could not be a prophetess and a feminine woman at one and the same time. Wilhelmine disagreed with him, as she was perfectly well able to imagine such a combination. It was not just this argument, but above all the unsettled life she led that destroyed the image Wagner had constructed of Wilhelmine as an ideal, devoted woman. We know from her authorized biography that she never succeeded in finding a partner worthy to match her, and that she–like Wagner–tried to dampen her yearnings by indulging in superficial pleasure. Her biographer, Claire Glümer, writes as follows of her loneliness: ‘In order to escape her unhappiness at being alone, Wilhelmine sought feverishly for a man to whom she could give her passionate heart. But it was not her talent to be lucky in love. With some men she would soon become convinced that they were insufficiently devoted to her; with others she would have to recognize that she had misjudged their qualities. Then she would turn away in pain and anger.’

Without any help from Minna, Wagner’s ‘urge’ disgusted him after a certain time, as we may infer from his Communication to my Friends. His yearning for a pure, ideal love finds expression in Tannhäuser: ‘In Tannhäuser I yearned to set myself free from the frivolous sensuousness that itself repelled me—it was the only expression of sensuousness that our modern times know. My urge was towards what was unknown to me and what was pure, chaste, virginal, all of which I hoped might provide fulfilment for a more noble, yet at the same time still essentially sensual desire—but a desire such as the frivolity of the present day could not satisfy.’ This desire to turn away from superficial eroticism is combined with his criticism of the entertainment that was offered to audiences in the theatres and concert halls of the big towns. Speculators, capital and the striving for profit dominated the cities, he said; plays of lesser quality were performed in order to provide a good income. Wagner criticized the stance of many a theater director, who ‘today offers vulgar jokes, tomorrow a piece for Philistines and on the third day a spicy delicacy for gourmets’. This condemnation of commercialized art led in the long run to the creation of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus.

However much Wagner kept his eye open for possibilities of ‘erotic adventure’, he remained in many respects dependent on his wife Minna. He needed his ‘very best Minel’ as a crutch in everyday life and as the protector of his creative work. In May 1843, when he was working on Tannhäuser, she went on a trip and Richard was overcome by a great feeling of restlessness. He wrote to her: ‘I have to avoid distractions as much as possible and go walking a lot on my own. It has to continue like this if I am to bear your absence’. He obviously tried to lessen her suspicions (no doubt well founded) that he was being unfaithful by assuring her that he stayed at home in the evenings. Furthermore, he wrote, people had told him he was getting fat. ‘You see, that comes from my serious attitude to life, the avoidance of pleasure, going to bed at 10, sometimes even at 9:30 – and anyway, you know that capons get fat.’ It is undeniable that he nevertheless gave in to his erotic fantasies time and again, though they always led him into that ‘terrible empty desert’, as he called it, resulting in the end in an irreconcilable conflict. It was in the fictitious world of his operas that Wagner worked through this conflict. As so often with him, life and art are intertwined.

In the ‘Legend of the Knight Tannhäuser’ in the collection of legends that Ludwig Bechstein published in 1837, on which Wagner drew, the erotic is largely sidelined. Besides sources by E. T. A. Hoffmann, Ludwig Tieck and others, Wagner was also influenced by Heinrich Heine’s great poem Der Tannhäuser, though as in the case of Der fliegende Hollander he excised everything that was ironic or banal. Heine could do nothing with the topics of sin and redemption—addressing these themes, his verses descend into the trivially comic. He says of Venus, for example, ‘She gave him soup, she gave him bread, she washed his wounded feet, she combed his straggly hair, and all the while laughed so sweet’. Such episodes were of no use to Wagner. In the first edition of his Tannhäuser libretto, he describes Venus and underlines in particular the fascination that she exuded in the Germanic legend in which she figured. She united ‘all notions of a being magical but unhappy, and who entices one to indulge in sinful, sensual pleasure’. He did not want to make Venus too negative, for Tannhäuser was obviously very much at home with her. All the same, the sinfulness of what she does had to be made clear. In any case, there was no room for irony.

When he was in Paris in 1860-61, several years after finishing the opera, Wagner refined the music of the Venusberg. His experience of life in the meantime had expanded his vision, as he wrote to Mathilde Wesendonck: ‘I have worked somewhat on the music for my new scene. It is strange: everything interior, passionate, I could almost say: feminine and ecstatic, I was unable to realize at the time I wrote Tannhäuser. I have had to cast everything overboard and sketch it anew. Truly, I am horrified by my cardboard-cut-out Venus of back then!’ He presumably wanted Mathilde to know that only she was able to awaken the emotional and the sensual within him that in turn made possible a higher level of compositional maturity. In his correspondence with Otto Wesendonck, on the other hand, we read: ‘I have not yet been able to finish the orchestration of the new scene between Tannhäuser and Venus. The first—the dance scene—isn’t written at all, and I have as yet no idea how I want to do it’. Whereas Mathilde learns that he is only now experienced enough in life to be able to compose erotic music, he tells Otto tactfully that he is devoid of ideas for it.

The impact of eroticism on the world of man—at once enticing yet dangerous—is clearly audible in the music. The overture comprises the melody of the Pilgrims’ Chorus, Tannhäuser’s hymn to Venus and a description of Venus. At first, calm chords are heard in the wind, intoning the Pilgrims’ Chorus. The major mode, the triad at the beginning of the melody, the periodic construction and the chorale-like chords make for a dignified, ceremonial atmosphere. This becomes ever more highly charged until the trombones repeat the melody emphatically, accompanied by rapid ornaments in the violins. This is a ‘man’s world’ to a tee, into which, however, the world of the erotic suddenly enters: the slippery, descending chromaticism, the trills and the lack of a bass line deprive the music of its firm foundations, and this effect is strengthened by the diminished-seventh chords announced in the violas.

In European music, the bass usually forms the backbone upon which everything else is built. Whereas the music of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, which grew out of Gregorian chant, is based on a cantus firmus—a melody played throughout that is embellished by instruments and/or voices—the tendency became ever clearer after 1600 to build up harmonies from a supporting bass line. The decisive novelty in musical Classicism (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven) was cadence-based composition, which enabled major/minor tonality to achieve its final breakthrough. Chords were now built upon a bass line that utilized dissonance to create tension that is then resolved by ending in the tonic. Any lack of bass support thus has a destabilizing impact. This is the case here, and its disconcerting effect is heightened in Wagner’s depiction of Venus, in which he employs unusual harmonic combinations. The aria with which Venus intends to seduce Tannhäuser contains two tritones that convey the danger she signifies.

Wagner gives stage directions for Venus’s realm whose boldness is surprising, for he here makes evident his knowledge of female anatomy. In a grotto that extends as far as the eye can see, there is a lake with a greenish waterfall, under which the waves billow. Tropical foliage grows everywhere, and everything is bathed in a gentle rosy light. On the stage lie young men entwined with nymphs. It is noteworthy that Minna did not like the musical expansion of the Bacchanale that Wagner undertook in Paris, calling it ‘Venus shenanigans’. Baudelaire, on the other hand, spoke appropriately of ‘ever new onslaughts of pleasure’. Wagner also added an obviously exotic element to the music. In the scene he sketched afterwards, he imposed no limits on his imagination. The depiction of the sexual act, which was at the time never spoken of in public and was at best a source of smut in the male boudoir, is here lavishly embellished. Triangle, castanets, timpani, cymbals and tambourine all evoke an exotic sound-world. Everything turns upon the satisfaction of sexual desire, and the sirens sing: ‘Approach the land where blessed warmth in the arms of glowing love will still your urges!’ These unfettered, sensuous, enticing sounds are furnished with extensive stage directions by Wagner. A procession of Bacchantes approaches, and their ‘gestures of enthusiastic inebriation’ urge the lovers to indulge in ‘wild pleasure’. They throw themselves into ‘erotic loving embraces’. Satyrs and fauns dance in between the couples, and the ‘chaos increases to a point of the greatest intensity’. In the midst of the ‘highest frenzy’, three graces emerge, who endeavour to dampen the excitement. They shake the sleeping Amorettes, who flutter up and from above shoot six arrows into the hurly-burly. In contrast to the pious pilgrims’ music at the beginning, here it is women who determine the course of events.

In his first ideas for the scene, as Wagner described them to the Wesendoncks, which were later omitted from his stage directions, this utopian vision was mixed with scenes of fear. The wild tumult was to have seen appearances by tigers, panthers and imaginary creatures, including giant birds with human torsos, or animals that were half lion, half eagle. The graces were to have been ‘overpowered’ by the centaurs and carried off (in other words, raped). Here we see that Wagner’s conception of the scene was at first contradictory: he wanted the charms that Venus exuded, but also the terrible fear of the vagina dentata. When Baudelaire speaks in admiration of the ‘true, terrible’ Venus, ‘dominant everywhere’, he stresses that aspect of her being that tends to possession. Despite the unending pleasure that she is ready to give, she provokes fear at the same time because she threatens to ensnare men. But Wagner did not want to see Venus damned, and Tannhäuser was not to criticize her expressly. This ambivalence can also be observed in Wagner’s essay ‘On performing Tannhäuser’, in which we learn that the singer of the Venus in Weimar was so successful because she was unselfconscious and played her role with warmth.

The erotically enticing woman who stands outside bourgeois norms was also a theme of numerous operas in the late 19th century and into the 20th. From Richard Strauss’s Elektra and Salome via Samson and Delilah by Camille Saint-Saëns down to Alban Berg’s Lulu, these characters reflect the fears conjured up at the time by the notion of a strong, independent, sexually potent woman.

The Landgrave makes a stately entrance and talks with her. His part is mostly diatonic and conveys a sense of lordly authority. Three trumpets on the stage announce the imminent festival, and they are followed by the ceremonial entry of the guests in honour of the singing contest. The procession moves along to a brilliant diatonicism, with dotted rhythms and sonorous chords, the full sound of the strings complemented by the gentleness of the horns. ‘We joyfully greet this noble hall’ sings the chorus of knights, and this joy is communicated in the music. The noble women continue the song, which provides a certain equilibrium, given the dominance in the ensemble of the (male) singers, counts and knights.

Towards the end of the opera, Elisabeth’s transformation into an ‘angel’ is praised, and she dies as an ideal Mary-type. In the final act—above all after her suicidal prayer—she is nothing more than a chimera, a figure without any life of her own. She serves merely to personify Tannhäuser’s ‘highest longing for love’. But it has been a long journey for Elisabeth to get this far—the passion she displays in her opening aria, ‘Dich, teure Halle’, stands in contradiction to her later angelic self.

She understands Tannhäuser’s conflict, not just through feelings of solidarity, but because she too knows desire. Sensual passion was at that time a taboo topic for women. A woman in the 19th century was not allowed to experience lust, because this threatened to make her independent and would in turn endanger male dominance. The fact that Elisabeth admits to her desire is thus a breaking of taboos, even if that desire is watered down by being centred on one man alone.

Wagner thus accepts the sexual origins of Elisabeth’s passion and understands that it is a component part of her being—albeit only when channelled and fixed on a single lover. When Elisabeth learns that this man has given himself to unlicensed sexual pleasure, she is as shocked as are the knights, but her love is so strong that she overcomes her feelings of revulsion. She saves her lover from the threat of murder by the knights and hopes for a pardon from the church, so that she may yet be united with him. When the news of his rejection arrives from Rome, life has no more purpose for her and she begs the ‘almighty virgin’ Mary to hear her prayer. At this point, we see and hear Elisabeth’s pious side. Her earlier passion has receded into the background, and she is transformed into an ‘angelic’ being: ‘Let me enter into thy blessed realm, pure and angel-like / If ever, ensnared by foolish fancies, my heart did stray from thee / if ever a sinful longing or a worldly yearning sprang up within me / I wrestled it amidst a thousand torments to kill it in my heart!’.

Her prayer is influenced by the French/Italian preghiera tradition. Wagner had written a similar prayer in the third act of Rienzi (‘Allmächt’ger Vater, blick’ herab’ — ‘Almighty Father, look down’), though there the singer is a man. The content of the two prayers is indebted to the usual gender-specific models: whereas Rienzi begs to be saved and is anchored firmly in the here and now (‘Do not yet take away the power that your miracle gave me’), Elisabeth has given up all hope and yearns for death. Her prayer is accompanied in the orchestra only by woodwind, and its individual lines are organized largely symmetrically, conveying an impression of naivety. Despite occasional chromaticism in the melody, which accords the character a certain individuality, the tradition of simplicity and modesty prevails. The clarinet, bass clarinet and bassoon accompany her lament. The first four lines all lead downwards—a clear sign of sadness. Only in the middle section is there any movement—when she speaks of her guilt (though there is no hint of what this could possibly be). The melodic line is enriched and chromaticized by diminished-seventh chords, the words ‘thousand pains’ are stressed by a descending octave leap, the harmony loses its sense of stasis and the woodwind instruments flute and oboe (both of which carry feminine connotations) join in.

But this confession of guilt sinks away in the recapitulation of the first section, so that the prayer ends as it began: at a slow, regular tempo, clearly periodic in construction and with transparent, tender orchestration. After Elisabeth has fallen silent, the woodwinds—instruments from the ‘feminine’ realm—play during her long exit (59 bars). Wolfram offers to accompany her, but she rejects his offer. According to the stage directions, she is to make clear to him by her gestures that ‘her path is leading her to heaven, where she has a high office to perform’. Three flutes ascend to a high, bright note that signifies her spiritual ascent. Oboes and clarinets join them, then the bassoon. The long-held, organ-like chords create a feeling of devoutness and solemnity. The slinking descent of the melody, the reduced accompaniment, the dark, strange sound of the bass clarinet, the simple rhythm, devoid of tension, the emphatic accentuation of pain and suffering by means of high notes—all these depict a woman who, here on earth, thinks of nothing but her lover and is ready to die for him. Here we find another example of how Wagner unfolds his musical material in conjunction with his dramatic and character-specific ideas.

Everything that is actively feminine is confined to the sinful, fear-inducing underworld, while feminine passivity comes across as pure and noble.

Whereas Tannhäuser is depicted as an active figure, who takes the necessary steps to achieve maturity, Elisabeth remains static and seems almost unalive: she is characterized by emotions that she does not live out, by an uncompromising submission to fate and by a yearning for death. What can Tannhäuser expect from such a woman? Many interpretations of the opera completely ignore the role of the women in it. In an otherwise excellent article, Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich deals only with Elisabeth’s death: ‘What the loving woman could not give him, the dead woman can: heavenly peace, redemption.’ But what would Wagner want to convey to the audience if that were his message? No bourgeois man could seriously wish for the death of his wife. Nor would a dead lover afford any prospect of fulfilment of desire to the creative artist. Death is rather to be understood here in a more symbolic fashion—as the ultimate sign of unshakeable fidelity. That is why Wagner was keen to stress the importance of Elisabeth’s role; in his revised version of the opera he even decided to show her coffin on stage. The dead woman was to be visible to the audience so that the sacrifice she has made will be even more evident. It was not her death that was the central point for him, but the ability of woman to love her lover more than herself. And it is her sacrifice that brings about Tannhäuser’s redemption: ‘It was precisely this that I wanted to stress clearly with the new ending, namely that Tannhäuser is redeemed not by a church that declares itself impotent, but by the boundless love of a woman (despite the church). The staff that grows green leaves comes only from the sacrificial death of Elisabeth: it disavows the church’. So Tannhäuser is moved to repentance not by the knights’ disgust, but solely through the pain of Elisabeth. Her fidelity to him, beyond death itself, is able to free him from his inner turmoil and to redeem him.

Wagner reshaped the end of the plot and discarded the usual configuration, in which Tannhäuser chooses Venus. Instead, Elisabeth’s sacrifice for Tannhäuser’s redemption is placed at the centre of things. The goddess of love is Venus; the God of love leads Tannhäuser to Elisabeth—here the world of the spirit reigns. The women once again draw the short straw within the cultural-moral order. But before her transformation into an angelic being, Elisabeth is indeed a woman of flesh and blood who is able to desire a man. That, at least, offers a ray of hope that Wagner was not wholly dependent on culturally fixed images, but was able to break through them, if only hesitantly. This is the good news. The bad news is that this breakthrough is not borne along by Wagner’s music: by remaining fixed on specific gender aspects in the musical depiction of his characters, Wagner thwarts the possibility of a new evaluation of this work.

FROM ‘MARA, MARIETTA’
PART THREE CHAPTER 12

̶  What did Tadzio do?
̶  Oh, he was ridiculous! Felt himself possessed of a sudden power, just because he was cheating on his wife. The poor bugger bought himself a wardrobe more fitting for his son, thinking his new look would please me.
̶  And Niels just kept his old jeans?

The glint in your eye is as golden as your Calva.

̶  Sprague, are you jealous?
̶  I’m jealous of his composure, yeah.
̶  Don’t be. You’re a poet. You’re in a whole other register.
̶  Sturm und Drang? I’d rather be cool and calm, like your Marlboro man.
̶  You’re an artist. Much more interesting.
̶  True. The meanders of sublimation can be magnificent.
̶  Indeed.
̶  Do you know, Marietta, if Wagner hadn’t had an affair with Mathilde Wesendonck, he’d never have written Tristan und Isolde?
̶  Yes, I’m aware that art owes a good deal to adultery.

If erotic life makes a world, with you I have a world. But am I capable of the pleasurable relationship?