Brahms, Mathilde Wesendonck, and the Would-Be “Cremation Cantata”
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Volume XXX, Number 2 Fall 2012 Brahms, Mathilde Wesendonck, and the Would-Be “Cremation Cantata” Mathilde Wesendonck (1828–1902) is best known to music historians not for her poetic and dramatic writings, but for her romantic entanglement with and artistic influence on Richard Wagner in the 1850s. In early 1852, Wagner met Mathilde and her husband Otto Wesendonck in Zurich, having fled there in search of asylum from the German authorities, who held a warrant for the composer’s arrest due to his involvement in the revolutionary activities at Dresden in 1848. Otto, a silk merchant, became a patron of Wagner, and in April 1857 the Wesendoncks began to shelter the composer and his wife Minna in a small cottage alongside their own villa in Zurich; Wagner called the cottage his “Asyl.” It was during this time that a love affair apparently evolved between Mathilde and Richard, although it was not necessarily consummated. Not surprisingly, this arrangement proved unsustainable. Minna confronted her husband about the affair in April 1858, and Wagner soon departed his Asyl permanently, heading to Venice; the affair with Mathilde was over, and his marriage would never recover.1 Although Wagner and Mathilde Wesendonck remained in touch, the Wesendoncks would turn down Wagner’s request Mathilde Wesendonck, sketch by Franz von Lenbach for a loan in 1863, and within another year, he was no longer welcome in their home.2 The relationship, however, had left its attitude toward Brahms in the mid-to-late 1860s may have been mark on his work: it is generally recognized as an inspiration influenced by the shift in Mathilde’s loyalties.4 for Tristan und Isolde (1857–59), and Wagner had set some of A relatively little-known oddity is the collection of poetic Mathilde’s poetry as his Wesendonck Lieder (1857–58); earlier, texts that Mathilde composed and sent to Brahms in 1874 in the he had dedicated to her his Sonate für das Album von Frau M. hope that he would set them to music. Little has been written W., WWV 85 (1853). about this somewhat awkward episode, particularly outside of What is less commonly realized is that, in the 1860s, once the German language. Here, I provide Mathilde’s texts and the her relationship with Wagner had cooled, Mathilde not only relevant correspondence in English translation, with annotations. became an admirer and personal acquaintance of Johannes I also situate these materials within the framework of Brahms’s Brahms, but also began a correspondence with him that was to relationship to Mathilde Wesendonck and contextualize them last for several years (1867–74), during which she attempted with regard to the significance of the year 1874 for the poetry’s to foster their relationship on both personal and artistic levels. highly unconventional subject matter: cremation. Although Brahms maintained a healthy respect for Wagner’s Mathilde’s contact with Brahms began in the mid-1860s, work, the clear ideological differences between the two when the composer, five years her junior, was in his early thirties. composers and the sentiments that Wagner openly expressed Her first exposure to his music, which was just becoming known towards Brahms and his music make the politics of Mathilde’s in Zurich at the time, had occurred there by November 1863, appeals for Brahms’s friendship especially interesting.3 Styra when she attended a well-received concert performance of the Avins has suggested that the apparent deterioration in Wagner’s D-Major Serenade, which inspired in her a sincere admiration for its composer.5 In the autumn of 1865, Brahms visited Zurich Wienerstrasse 14, as part of a solo tour, and a private concert on 26 November Dresden, consisting of his D-Minor Piano Concerto and A-Major Nov[em]b[e]r 24, [18]74 Serenade was organized jointly by Otto Wesendonck, Theodor Billroth, and the art historian Wilhelm Lübke.6 Brahms returned Highly revered sir! to Switzerland multiple times in the following year, spending the summer on the Zürichberg while working on his German Who would deny that we live in a time of change? Requiem, coming again in October for a series of concerts with We drag along heavily the forms of bygone centuries Joachim, and then returning yet again in November, when his whose substance is lost for us, and the outdated Op. 36 string sextet was played at a chamber-music soirée held garment, not fitted to our limbs, no longer suits us, like by Friedrich Hegar.7 During this period, Brahms came into the younger children of domesticated mothers who were repeated contact with the Wesendoncks, and Mathilde even designated by fate to put on the discarded clothing of invited him to stay in the cottage that had once been Wagner’s their older siblings! If Lessing’s time was concerned Asyl.8 Brahms declined, much to the approval of Clara Schu- with recognizing which of the three rings was the true mann, who wrote, “that you did not accept the Wesendoncks’ ring, and whether there even could be a true ring,15 so offer I found very prudent; that would have imposed on you an have we today the task, along with Georg Forster, of obligation with regard to these people that would often enough admitting openly and honestly “that there are fingers on have been a burden to you.”9 which the ring may not fit, and that the finger for that Following his departure, Mathilde began to write to Brahms, reason can yet be a good and useful finger!”— 16 repeating her invitation in a letter of June 1867: “During the In brief: I would like to win your interest for the old, [Zurich] music festival the Stockhausens are going to be our beautiful custom of cremation, which in any respect, guests; unfortunately I shall be absent. The little green nest better agrees with the views of the 19th century than nearby with its hermit’s gate will remain untouched; before I the nasty, Semitic custom [Unsitte] of burial, or the leave for St. Moritz I am going to see to it that at any time a light- interment of the dead. hearted swallow can find a modest shelter there.”10 Brahms, It is, to begin with, a question of how to consecrate who was preoccupied that summer by a visit from and travels the Aktus [body] in an artistic and ideal way so as with his father, once again failed to accept the invitation, nor to elevate it with a ceremony worthy of a leading did he accept upon its even more insistent reissue in December civilized nation.17 How better could this come about 1868, when Mathilde wrote, “I should not like to have lived than if one invites the muses to the funeral celebration? in this century without at least having begged you in the most You understand that I have in mind a sort of oratorio friendly and urgent way to rest at our fireside. I have done my or requiem, but, to be sure, without biblical text! For part, and now it is up to you to do your part. Enough words your examination I enclose a short poem suitable for have been exchanged, so let us finally see deeds. – And now I the purpose! It is my opinion that as soon as the noble, bid you adieu with the wish that we may very soon greet you on beautiful form is found, all the enlightened and the Swiss soil and at the performance of your [German Requiem]. civilized will avow themselves to cremation. You know, Please let me know when I may come to Basel, as I should like in addition, that I have the weakness of counting you to attend one or two rehearsals. […] Your rooms are ready for among the best and the most unprejudiced people of you at any time.”11 our time, and herein you will surely find the basis for The relationship was not one-sided, however. During his pardoning and forgiving me if I trouble you!– time in Zurich in 1866, Brahms had accepted invitations for Allow me this time, perhaps, to stand at the door visits to the Wesendonck home, where he had enjoyed examining with my plea? The gods be committed to it! Evermore, certain items related to Wagner that were in the couple’s with genuine admiration and earnest esteem, signed possession, including the manuscript score for Das Rheingold, which Wagner had given to the Wesendoncks personally.12 Your Brahms had also agreed to attend a performance of that work Mathilde Wesendonck18 in Munich with the Wesendoncks in 1869, but was ultimately dissuaded upon learning that Wagner himself disapproved of Interestingly enough, the poetry she enclosed exhibits the production.13 Furthermore, Brahms permanently retained a certain parallels with the texts of Brahms’s German Requiem, copy of Mathilde’s five-act drama Gudrun, which she had sent which was completed six years earlier in 1868 and in which, at his request in late 1868, when he was in search of a libretto as we have seen, she had clearly taken an interest. Perhaps suitable for an opera.14 most obviously, both Mathilde’s text and that of the Requiem Although Gudrun did not meet Brahms’s needs in that open with the words “Selig sind,” and both make mention of capacity (ultimately, no text did), this was not Mathilde’s only the plowman (“Ackermann” appears in the second movement attempt to have him set her work to music—nor was it her of Brahms’s work and, similarly, in the second stanza of most remarkable one.