PANAMA-PACIFIC INTERNATIONAL EXPOSITION SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA Wednesday, May 26, 1915 /J^WlH^ BOSTON ^^W^M^ SYAPMONY 0RO1ESTRH THIRTY-FOURTH SEASON W4-W5 ^Iff PRdGR7W\E Thirty-fourth Season, 1914-1915 Dr. KARL MUCK, Conductor Violins. Witek, A. Roth, 0. Hoffmann, J. Rissland, K. Concert-master. Koessler, M. Schmidt, E. Theodorowicz, J. Noack, S. Mahn, F. Bak, A. Traupe, W. Goldstein, H. Tak, E. Ribarsch, A. Baraniecki, A. Sauvlet, H. Habenicht, W. Fiedler, B. Berger, H. Goldstein, S. Fiumara, P. Spoor, S. Siilzen, H. Kurth, R. Griinberg, M. Pinfield, C. Gerardi, A. Ringwall, R. Gunderson, R. Gewirtz, J. Violas. Ferir, E. Werner, H. Gietzen, A. v.Veen, H. Wittmann, F. Schwerley, P. Berlin, W. Kautzenbach, W Van Wynbergen, C. Blumenau, W. Violoncellos. Warnke, H. Keller, J. Barth, C. Belinski, M. Steinke, B. Malkin, J. Nagel, R. Nast, L. Folgmann, E. Warnke, J. Basses. Kunze, M. Agnesy, K. Seydel, T. Ludwig, 0. Gerhardt, G. Jaeger, A. Huber, E. Schurig, R. Flutes. Oboes. Clarinets. Bassoons. Maquarre, A. Longy, G. Sand, A. Sadony, P. Brooke, A. Lenom, C. Mimart, P. Mueller, E. Chevrot, A. Stanislaus, H. Vannini, A. Fuhrmann, M. Battles, A. English Horn. Bass Clarinet. Contra-Bassoon. Mueller, F. Stumpf, K. Mosbach, J. Horns. Ho*NS. Trumpets. Trombones. Wendler, G. Jaenicke, B. Heim, G. Alloo, M. Lorbeer, H. Miersch, E. Mann, J. Belgiorno, S. Hain, F. Hess, M. Bach, V. Mausebach, A. Resch, A. Hiibner, E. Kloepfel, L. Kenfield, L. Tuba. Harps. Tympani. Percussion. Mattersteig, P. Holy, A. Neumann, S Zahn, F. Senia, T. Cella, T. Kandler, F. Burkhardt, H. Organ. Librarian. Assistant Librarian. Marshall, J. P. Sauerquell, J. Rogers, L. J. PANAMA-PACIFIC INTERNATIONAL EXPOSITION SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA Thirty-fourA Season, 1914-1915 Dr. KARL MUCK, Conductor WEDNESDAY, MAY 26 LAST PROGRAMME WAGNER PROGRAMME "A Faust Overture" "A Siegfried Idyl" Selections from "Siegfried" and "Dusk of the Gods' (Arranged by Hans Richter) The Good Friday Spell from "Parsifal" Selections from Act III, "The Mastersingers of Nuremberg" Overture to "Tannhauser" There will be an intermission of ten minutes before the Parsifal selection HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE NOTES BY PHILIP HALE COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY C. A. ELLIS PUBLISHED BY C. A. ELLIS, MANAGER l . " A Faust Overture Richard Wagner (Born at L,eipsic, May 22, 1813; died at Venice, February 13, 1883.) While Wagner, conductor at Riga, was writing "Rienzi," he kept thinking of Paris as the one place for the production of his opera. He arrived in Paris, after a stormy voyage from Pillau to London, in September, 1839. He and his wife and a big Newfoundland dog found lodgings in the Rue de la Tonnellerie This street was laid out in 1202, and named on account of the merchants in casks and hogsheads who there established themselves. The street began at the Rue Saint Honore, Nos. 34 and 36, and ended in the Rue Pirouette; it was known for a time in the seventeenth century as the Rue des Toilieres. Before the street was formed, it was a road with a few miserable houses occu- pied by Jews. Wagner's lodging was in No. 23,* the house in which Moliere is said to have been born. A tablet in commemoration of this birth was put into the wall in the Year VIII., and replaced when the house was rebuilt, in 1830. This street disappeared when Baron Hausmann improved Paris, and the Moliere tablet is now on No. 31 Rue du Pont-Neuf In spite of Meyerbeer's fair words and his own efforts, Wagner was unable to place his opera; he was obliged to do all manner of drudg- ery to support himself. He wrote songs, read proofs, arranged light music for various instruments, wrote articles for music journals. He himself tells us: "In order to gain the graces of the Parisian salon-world through its favorite singers, I composed several French romances, which, after all my efforts to the contrary, were considered too out-of-the-way and difficult to be actually sung. Out of the depth of my inner discontent, I armed myself against the crushing reaction of this outward art-activity by the hasty sketches and as hasty com- position of an orchestral piece which I called an 'overture to Goethe's "Faust,"' but which was in reality intended for the first section of a grand 'Faust' symphony." He wrote it, according to one of his biographers, in "a cold, draughty garret, shared with his wife and dog, and while he had a raging tooth- ache." On the other side of the sheet of paper which bears the earliest sketch is a fragment of a French chansonette. Before this, as early as 1832, Wagner had written incidental music to Goethe's drama and numbered the set Op. 5. These pieces were: Soldiers' Chorus, Rustics under the Linden, Brander's Song, two songs of Mephistopheles, Gretchen's song, "Meine Ruh' ist hin," and melo- drama for Gretchen. This music was intended for performance at Leipsic, where Wagner's sister, Johanna Rosalie (1803-37), the play- actress, as Gretchen, was greatly admired, f It has been stated by several biographers that the overture to " Faust was played at a rehearsal of the Conservatory orchestra, and that the players held up hands in horror. Georges Servieres, in his "Richard Wagner juge" en France," gives this version of the story. "The pub- lisher Schlesinger busied himself to obtain for his young compatriot * Felix and Louis Lazare, in their " Dictionnaire des Rues de Paris" (Paris, 1844), give 5 as the number of Moliere's birth-house. t Some preferred her in this part to Schroeder-Devrient. Thus Laube wrote that he had never seen Gretchen played with such feeling: "For the first time the expression of her madness thrilled me to the marrow, and I soon discovered the reason. Most actresses exaggerate the madness into unnatural pathos. They declaim in a hollow, ghostly voice. Demoiselle Wagner used the same voice with which she had shortly before uttered her thoughts of love. This grewsome contrast produced the greatest effect " Rosalie married the writer, Dr. G. O. Marbach, in 1836 " a hearing at the Societe" des Concerts. Wagner presented to the society the overture to 'Faust' which he had just sketched and which should form a part of a symphony founded on Goethe's drama. The Gazette Musicale of March 22, 1840, announced that an overture for 'Faust' by M. R. Wagner had just been rehearsed. After this rehearsal the players looked at each other in stupefaction and asked themselves what the com- poser had tried to do. There was no more thought of a performance." Now the Gazette Musicale of March 22, 1840, spoke of Wagner's remarkable talent. It said that the overture obtained "unanimous applause"; it added, "We hope to hear it very soon"; but it did not give the title of the overture. Glasenapp says in his Life of Wagner that this overture was not "Faust," but the "Columbus" overture, which was written for Apel's play in 1835, and performed that year at Magdeburg, when Wagner was conductor at the Magdeburg Theatre. It was performed in Paris, February 4, 1841, at a concert given by the Gazette Musicale to its sub- scribers. The first performance of the "Faust" overture was at a charity concert in the pavilion of the Grosser Garten, Dresden, July 22, 1844. The programme was as follows: overture to Goethe's "Faust" (Part L), Wagner; "The First Walpurgis Night" ballad for chorus and orchestra, poem by Goethe, music by Mendelssohn; "Pastoral" Sym- phony, Beethoven. Wagner conducted it. The work was called " " Berliozian programme music : and acute critics discovered in it taunts of Mephistopheles and the atoning apparition of Gretchen, whereas, as we shall see, the composer had thought only of Faust, the student and philosopher. The overture was repeated with- no better success August 19, 1844. A correspondent of the Berlin Figaro advised Wagner to follow it up with an opera "which should be based neither on Goethe's nor on Klingemann's 'Faust,' but on the sombre old Gothic folk-saga, with all its excrescences, in the manner of ' Der Freischiitz.' * * Wagner's purpose was to portray in music a soul "aweary of life, yet ever forced by his indwelling daemon to engage anew in life's en- deavors." This purpose is clearly defined in the letters of Wagner to Liszt and Uhlig. Wagner wrote to Liszt (January 30, 1848): "Mr. Halbert tells me you want my overture to Goethe's 'Faust.' As I know of no reason to withhold it from you, except that it does not please me any longer, I send it to you, because I think that in this matter the only important ques- tion is whether the overture pleases you. If the latter should be the case, dispose of my work; only I should like occasionally to have the manuscript back again."* In 1852 Wagner reminded Liszt of the manuscript, hoped he had given it to a copyist, and added: "I have a mind to rewrite it a little and to publish it. Perhaps I shall get money for it." He reminded him again a month later. By Liszt's reply (October 7, 1852) it will be seen that he had already produced the overture at Weimar, f "A copy of it exists here, and I shall probably give it again in the course of this winter. The work is quite worthy of you; but, if you will * The translation of these excerpts from the Wagner-Liszt correspondence is by Francis Hueffer. f This performance was on May n, 1852. Liszt wrote to Wagner, "Your 'Faust' overture made a sen- ation and went well." allow me to make a remark, I must confess that I should like either a second middle part or else a quieter and more agreeably colored treat- ment of the present middle part.