Lortzing’s Hans Sachs as inspiration for Wagner’s Die Meistersinger

In his essay A Communication to my Fri- ends, Wagner recalled that, in the mid- 1840s, ‘certain good friends’ (including, no doubt, Röckel) had tried to persuade him to compose an opera in a lighter gen- re, for which Lortzing provided the obvio- us model. The 1845 sketch for Die Meistersinger And so, during a health cure at the spa at Marienbad in Bohemia in 1845 (a semi- nal year in the Wagner story) he began to think about Hans Sachs and the Master- singers of Nuremberg as possible subjects for a lighter work. At Marienbad on 16th July 1845, he signed off on a long and de- tailed three-act prose sketch that was re- markably close to the drama we know to- day. ‘I took Hans Sachs’ he wrote later, ‘as Albert Lortzing composed an opera about the final manifestation of the artistically Hans Sachs (1494–1567), a cobbler and Hans Sachs. creative popular spirit, and set him, in this poet. sense, in contrast to the pettifogging bom- Albert Lortzing (1801-51) wrote his comic bast of the other Mastersingers; to whose the love-interest is fully developed in the opera Hans Sachs in 1840, and it was first absurd pedantry of Tabulatur and prosody, I first scene, whereas it is handled more ten- performed that year at Leipzig. His best- gave a concrete personal expression in the tatively and to better effect in the final sco- known work, Zar und Zimmermann (Tsar figure of the “Marker.” ‘6 re. Sachs’ soliloquy in Act Three is not the and Carpenter) had had its premiere three Virtually all of the key ingredients of philosophical reverie on folly and delusi- years earlier. Wagner’s finished work are to be found in on that it became, but a discourse on the For 150 years, Lortzing was, after Mozart that 1845 sketch, and at the end, added decline of German poetic arts. There is and Verdi, the most performed opera com- as an afterthought, is the couplet with its no reference yet to ‘the sad tale of Tristan poser in Germany.1 In 1928/29 there were word play on ‘Holy Roman Empire’ and und Isolde’ because Wagner hadn’t consi- 843 performances of his works in German ‘holy German art’: dered this story in 1845. But there are re- theatres, compared with 821 of Mozart’s.2 ferences in the sketch to Siegfried, Grim- The decade 1955-65 saw 8,719 Lortzing ‘Tho’ the Holy Roman hilde and Hagen, and to Wolfram’s Parzi- performances, a number exceeded only by Empire dissolve in mist, val, characters who were already jostling the operas of Verdi, Mozart and Puccini.3 yet for us will holy for attention during that crucial holiday However, there have been fewer stagings German art persist.’ at Marienbad. of Lortzing’s works in recent years.4 Die Meistersinger wasn’t finished until In modern times, Hans Sachs was per- Sachs’s final words echo those of Schiller, 1867 – Lohengrin, most of the Ring and Tris- formed at the Young Artists’ Festival at written fifty years earlier. ‘While the poli- tan having intervened. However, the huge Bayreuth in 1983, and since then it has tical empire totters’ said Schiller, ‘the spi- libretto was completed in January 1862, been staged at Saarbrücken (1985), Hei- ritual empire has become increasingly se- well before Bismarck came to office in Prus- delberg (1986) and Osnabrück (where it cure and more perfect.’ sia, two years before Wagner met Ludwig was also recorded) in 2001. However, there are interesting differen- II of Bavaria, four-and-a-half years before Lortzing was related by marriage5 to Au- ces between the 1845 sketch and the finis- Prussia’s victory in its war with Austria and gust Röckel, Wagner’s assistant at Dresden hed version. Some are matters of detail such Bavaria, and eight-and-a-half years before and fellow revolutionary, who spent thir- as the relocation of the action in Act One the Franco-Prussian War. teen years in Waldheim prison for his invol- from the church of St Sebaldus, Wagner’s National pride in the ‘old Thuringian vement in the 1849 uprisings. Röckel was first choice, to that of St Catherine alt- spirit’, ‘the great Emperors’ and the poetic the nephew of Hummel who was a pupil of hough, in fact, St Catherine’s wasn’t used wealth of ‘our great German past’ features Mozart, Clementi, Albrechtsberger, Haydn by the Mastersingers until the 17th centu- in the 1845 sketch but not in the libretto, and Salieri, friend ry, long after the time of Hans Sachs. Ot- and there is a reason for this. The works of Beethoven and her differences are of greater consequence that influenced Wagner in 1845, such as Schubert and te- and relate to the characters. Sachs is cyni- Lortzing’s opera, the play on which it was acher of Mendels- cal, even calculating in the sketch; and the based, and even the original writings of sohn and Czer- (unnamed) young knight is more prone to Hans Sachs, stressed love of the father- ny who, in turn, self-pity than self-confidence. The sketch land, and so he picked up this theme. Ho- taught Liszt. It also reveals that Wagner was in two minds wever, by 1861 his ideas had matured and was a very small as to how the Marker (unnamed) should the finished work became a study in aest- world, musically get hold of the prize song. Should he steal hetics and humanism. Any traces of those speaking in tho- it? Or should Sachs give it to him, passing earlier influences were now directed firm- se days. it off as a work of his youth and thereby ly towards art. Text: Peter Bassett perpetrating a cruel hoax? In the sketch, Wagneriaani 23 The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation

We know that at the time of the 1845 sketch, Wagner was interested in the his- tory of ‘the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation’ as it had been called sin- ce the late 15th Century. This thousand- year Reich that had begun with Charlemag- ne in 800 AD, was finally dissolved on 6 August 1806 at the behest of Napoleon. The empire had been in a long, slow decli- ne and it took only a puff from Napoleon to blow it away. The constituent kingdoms and principalities then became attractive targets for the French. Wagner was espe- cially interested in the empire’s Ottonian dynasty (also known as the Saxon dynas- ty) that included King Henry the Fow- ler, immortalized as König Heinrich in Lo- hengrin (begun 1845), and the Hohenstau- fen dynasty. The latter featured in his 1843 plans for an opera to be called Die Sarazenin (The Saracen Woman) and 1846 plans for an opera about Friedrich Barbarossa. The Hohenstaufens were also at the centre of his Wibelungen essay of 1849, in which he sought to link history and myth. Nuremberg had been a free imperial city from the 13th century, which meant it was governed by a powerful town coun- cil answerable directly to the emperor but not to other princes and rulers. It did not become part of Bavaria until 1806. The emperor at the time in which Lortzing set his drama, 1517, was Maximilian I. Ma- ximilian was a keen supporter of the arts and sciences, and surrounded himself with scholars whom he appointed to court posts. His reign saw the first flourishing of the Re- The Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I appears in Lortzing’s opera. naissance in Germany. Maximilian appears on stage in Lortzing’s opera, resolving con- through the recurring metaphor of baptism. works of various kinds including more than flicts and restoring harmony, as good mo- The action is set at a time when Luther’s 4,000 mastersongs, disseminated through narchs should. Reformation was taking hold in northern the agency of moveable type. In Die Meistersinger, Sachs refers in his Europe, and the Counter-Reformation was closing address to the threat of ‘foreign being launched by Pius IV, whose pontifi- mists and foreign vanities’, a provocati- cate began in 1560 – the very year in which Lortzing, Deinhardstein, ve phrase to modern ears but one that ref- Die Meistersinger is set. How can we be so Goethe and Wagner lects a historical reality – the anxiety felt sure about this date for the opera when Wag- It seems unlikely that Wagner had seen a about the cultural alienation of the empe- ner specified only ‘about the middle of the performance of Lortzing’s Hans Sachs befo- ror from his people following the death of sixteenth century’ in his libretto? Because re he penned his own thoughts on the sub- Maximilian in 1519. Maximilian’s succes- 1560 was the only year in which the his- ject, since he was in Paris at the time of the sor was Charles V of Aragon and Castile, torical Hans Sachs was a widower. He re- 1840 premiere and was still there in 1841 who claimed that he spoke Spanish to God, married the following year. when further performances were given in Italian to women, French to men, and Ger- Lortzing’s comic opera – Singspiel really, Leipzig and in Detmold where Lortzing had man to his horse. He was succeeded by his because it has a lot of spoken dialogue – had once lived. He was fully engaged in his du- brother, Ferdinand I, who was emperor du- its first performance on 23 June 1840 as part ties as Kapellmeister at Dresden when anot- ring the period in which Die Meistersinger of a Leipzig festival that celebrated the qua- her performance was given at Detmold in is set, although neither he nor any other dricentenary of the invention of moveable May 1843, and he was preoccupied with political figure appears in Wagner’s drama type. Amongst the other works in the fes- Tannhäuser at the time of the revised sta- – unlike Lortzing’s. tival was Mendelssohn’s Symphony no 2, ging at Mannheim in May 1845. However, Lobgesang (Hymn of Praise), commissio- there are so many coincidences between ned especially for the event. This sympho- Die Meistersinger and Lortzing’s opera that Reformation and ny was concerned with mankind’s progress he must have been familiar with the latter, Counter-Reformation from darkness to enlightenment through at least from the page. He refers to Röckel Religion plays a more important role in Die the dissemination of God’s word via the as having modest ambitions as a composer Meistersinger than it does in Lortzing’s Hans Gutenberg Bible. The opera on the other and ‘with no higher purpose than to equal Sachs. Reformation, renaissance and rene- hand was devoted to one of the most pro- the achievements of his brother-in-law wal all find expression in Die Meistersinger lific users of words, who wrote over 6,000 Lortzing’. So he knew what those achieve- 24 Wagneriaani who had rediscovered Sachs in the cour- The historical Sachs did indeed marry se of his exploration of the world of the a woman called Kunigunde Kreutzer who sixteenth century, and who had written a died in 1560, and he remarried the follo- poem in 1776 (the bicentenary of Sachs’s wing year when he was 67. His second wife death) entitled Explanation of an Old Woo- was called Barbara, and she was 29 when dcut Representing Hans Sachs’ Poetical Cal- they married. ling. Echoes of this poem can be heard in Amongst the other characters in Die Meistersinger, especially in the Wahn- Lortzing’s opera is the ‘First Marker’ (his- monologue and in Walther’s evocation of torically, there were three Markers to scru- the Muse of Parnassus. The Berlin perfor- tinize a performance) whose name is Meis- mance of Deinhardstein’s play was prefa- ter Stott. Stotterer means ‘stutterer’, so as- ced by Goethe’s poem for which a special sociations between the marker and stut- introduction had been written, and this tering or stammering definitely pre-date was declaimed by the actor Eduard Dev- Wagner. rient who was to become an associate of There is further common ground bet- Wagner in Dresden from 1843 and who- ween Lortzing and Wagner in terms of dra- se advice led to the creation of the prolo- matic devices. We find a rudimentary use gue to Götterdämmerung. So, not only did of leading-motives in Lortzing’s score, with Wagner have a connection with Lortzing the theme of the emperor’s admiration for Johann Ludwig Deinhard von Deinhardstein through Röckel, he had another with Dein- Sachs handled in much the same way as (1794-1859) hardstein through Devrient. the ‘forbidden question’ theme in Loheng- rin. In both Die Meistersinger and Hans Sa- ments were. Perhaps Wagner didn’t want chs there is a full-scale dance of the Ap- people to think that his ambitions were Hans Sachs and prentices. In each work too, we are given also modest, or that he was cribbing anot- Die Meistersinger – a rhythmical cobbling song with nonsen- her composer’s ideas. He was similarly coy the common ground sical words used as a refrain between ver- in admitting that his interest in the Tris- In Lortzing’s opera, set in 1517 when the ses. In Die Meistersinger, Sachs sings ‘Jerum! tan story had been kindled by Schumann’s historical Hans Sachs would have been Jerum! Hallo halloe! Oho! Trallalei! Tral- plans in 1846 for an opera on the subject – 23, the action turns on Sachs’s first court- lalei! Ohe!’ In Act Two of Lortzing’s ope- plans, incidentally, to which both Hans- ship and marriage. He is a young master ra, Görg sings: ‘Juchhe! Juchhe! Jufalala- lick and Mendelssohn were privy. cobbler in love with Kunigunde, daugh- lalalalala fallalei! Juchhe! Juchhe!’ and so We know that Wagner liked the score ter of Meister Steffen (the equivalent of forth. The devices are similar, but while in of Zar und Zimmermann because, years la- Wagner’s Pogner), a goldsmith and sta- Die Meistersinger we have a complex, dra- ter, it was amongst the works he would play tus-conscious mastersinger who is elected matic situation built around the attempted and sing for his own amusement – badly, Bürgermeister. elopement of Walther and Eva, Görg’s song one witness recalled, but with great viva- Steffen has chosen a prospective hus- is, by contrast, charmingly naïve. city and expressiveness.7 band for his daughter in one Eoban Hes- In Meistersinger, as Sachs bellows loud- Albert Lortzing lived to be only 49, and se8, an Alderman from Augsburg, not far ly and strikes his hammer, he sings about in the period before his death he was under from Nuremberg. Steffen announces that Adam and Eve being driven out of para- huge stress and deeply in debt. His wife and his Kunigunde will be the prize at a sin- dise and treading painfully because they the surviving seven of their eleven children ging contest open to everyone. But since went unshod – which is why angels were were left virtually destitute and, although he is unwilling to leave anything to chan- the first cobblers. We hear the surprised friends came to their rescue, it was too late ce, he secretly arranges for the masters to and then resigned interjections of Walther for poor Lortzing. His music was popular, award the prize to Eoban. In Die Meister- and Eva, whose escape has been foiled, and but it was pirated with impunity in those singer, Beckmesser thinks he has a similar the cantankerous mutterings of Beckmes- days before adequate royalty arrangements, ‘understanding’ with Pogner. In due cour- ser who, like the serpent, is there to tempt and this robbed him of income. He was tre- se, Eoban is declared the victor with a song Eva with his serenading. There are referen- ated badly by theatre managements and, in about the death of King David’s rebellio- ces to Adam and Eve and the serpent in the end, was reduced to conducting vau- us son Absolom, even though the specta- Goethe’s poem on Hans Sachs. deville in Berlin. He was too ill to attend tors clearly prefer Sachs’s song of love and Deinhardstein’s play was a tragedy, but the opening performance of his last opera the fatherland. Lortzing turned it into a comedy with the Die Opernprobe, too poor to pay for a doc- The Emperor Maximilian appears on the help of his friends Philipp Reger and Phi- tor, and died the following day. scene. Sachs’s apprentice Görg (the equi- lipp Düringer. The main contributions of Lortzing’s Hans Sachs was loosely based valent of Wagner’s David) had stolen one Lortzing and his librettists were the sin- on the dramatic poem of the same name of his master’s songs, intending to send it ging competition, the outdoor celebrati- by Johann Ludwig Deinhard von Dein- to his sweetheart Kordula (the equivalent on, the theft and garbling of a love poem, hardstein. This play was successful and was of Magdalene) who is Kunigunde’s cousin. and the treatment of the populace as an translated into other languages. It was cer- But the song was lost and, by chance had important participant in the action – all tainly known to Wagner. Deinhardstein, in fallen into the hands of the emperor who features that were to be picked up and de- addition to being a writer and critic, was admires it and wants to know who wrote veloped by Wagner. an official at the imperial court and teach- it. Eoban Hesse claims that it is his work, In both the play and comic opera, Sa- er of aesthetics at the diplomatic academy but when he is asked to perform it, he gets chs is disliked by the establishment (per- in Vienna. He was literary manager and as- into a frightful muddle, confusing it with sonified by the Bürghers), and by his fel- sistant head of the Hofburgtheater and a his ‘Absolom’ song, and everyone laughs at low guild members. In the play he is deri- censor for the imperial police under Met- him. It is pretty clear where Wagner’s treat- ded as being too smart for his own good, ternich. His play Hans Sachs was first pro- ment of Beckmesser came from. Eventual- always wanting to be different and pay- duced in Vienna in 1827, and Goethe, no ly, Görg’s confession leads to a dénouement ing little heed to the Tabulatur. Beckmes- less, provided a prologue for a subsequent which leaves Sachs and his Kunegunde to ser picks up this theme in Meistersinger. In Berlin performance. In fact it was Goethe live happily ever after. Lortzing’s opera, Sachs is patronized be- Wagneriaani 25 cause of his lowly occupation – a humble The inspiration for Schuster (cobbler) – and lack of sophisti- Beckmesser cation. But the townsfolk love him, and in his competition with Eoban Hesse they Wagner’s Beckmesser combines two of are definitely on his side, supporting him Lortzing’s characters: the First Marker, Meis- in defiance of the self-interested verdict of ter Stott, and Eoban Hesse, the opinionated, the middle-class masters.9 classically educated Alderman from Augs- When Emperor Maximilian brings about burg. Eoban arrives at Sachs’s workshop with the happy ending, he is carrying out the a pair of shoes that need mending (paralle- wishes of the people. Just as Sachs is the ling Sachs’s mending of Beckmesser’s shoes people’s artist, so Maximilian is the people’s in Act Two of Die Meistersinger). He has all emperor. ‘Is he not the father of his peop- the qualities that we know and love in Six- le?’ Sachs asks in Act One. ‘Is there any- tus Beckmesser, who is of course the only one in the empire who does not love the Mastersinger in Wagner’s work to be clas- emperor?’10 sically educated, to have a Latin first name Interestingly, Wagner advocated a simi- and to occupy an important official posi- lar role for the Saxon king during the 1848 tion. Eoban even sounds like Beckmesser, upheavals, proposing that the existing po- and can’t accept the fact that his rival is a wer structure be swept away, but that the humble cobbler. ‘Ein Ratsherr und ein Schus- king should remain as father of his people ter’ (‘an Alderman and a cobbler’) – they and head of a crowned republic. This put are unlikely competitors. At one point Eo- Wagner squarely in the camp of those not ban mockingly says to the apprentice Görg: to be trusted. The Minister of Culture at the ‘then you’re also a shoemaker and a poet Saxon court at the time was Baron Ludwig too’, to which Görg replies: ‘Most kind of von der Pfordten, soon to become Prime you! But please! …A tombstone is the pla- Minister to the King of Bavaria and an arch- ce for lines like these’. enemy of Richard Wagner. Undoubtedly, There is no procession of guilds in eit- much of the hostility towards Wagner in her Lortzing’s opera or Deinhardstein’s play, Munich in the 1860s had its roots in his since this feature was entirely Wagner’s in- last few years in Dresden. novation. In fact, there were no craft guilds Hans-Hermann Ehrich as Eoban. Lortzing and his librettists make use of an in Nuremberg after 1394, when an uprising old 18th century piece of doggerel to the ef- led to their dissolution. Wagner got the idea glances at the text and introduces scraps fect that Hans Sachs was a shoe-maker and of a procession of craftsmen when he was of his Absolom song, clearly anticipates a poet too (‘Hans Sachs war ein SchuhMacher in exile in Zürich and witnessed the Sech- the scene in Die Meistersinger when Beck- und Poet dazu’). Wagner also uses this at the seläuten festival, still held each year in Ap- messer confuses Walther’s ‘morning dream’ end of Sachs’s cobbling song. In Act One ril to drive out winter spirits and welcome with his own ludicrous serenade from the of Die Meistersinger there is a variation of it the spring.11 night before. (although it is usually lost in the din at the In Act Two of Lortzing’s opera, an un- Lortzing’s Sachs then intervenes and end of the Act) when Sachs says of Walt- ruly crowd gathers for the song contest. declaims the poem properly. Eoban’s dis- her: ‘If I, Hans Sachs, make verse and sho- ‘Stille’ (be quiet’) and ‘Ruhe’ (calm down’) grace in front of the Emperor is comple- es, he’s a knight and a poet too’. people call out, in the manner of the cries te and he is sent packing. Lortzing actual- Maximilian arrives at Sachs’s workshop of ‘Silentium!’ from Wagner’s apprentices, ly goes further than Wagner in rubbing-in incognito and tells him that the emperor but no-one takes any notice. The choruses the fraudster’s humiliation. Despite everyt- has read some of his verses and wishes to with their drawn-out vowel sounds antici- hing, Wagner’s Sachs is still able to refer to meet him. He has heard that a Bürgermeis- pate Wagner’s treatment of the ‘bleating’, the Marker as ‘friend Beckmesser’. ter in Nuremberg is offering the hand of his ‘stretching’ and ‘baking’ of his guilds. We In Lortzing’s opera, class rivalry features daughter as the prize in a singing contest, hear the stammering interjections of Meis- prominently, with the rivals being the so- and asks if this is true. Sachs, overflowing ter Stott as he struggles to make his announ- cially high-flying Eoban and the humble, with love for Kunigunde, confirms that it is. cements and others impatiently finish his non-conforming Sachs. But class has litt- He had almost forgotten the song contest sentences for him. le or no place in Die Meistersinger. ‘Whet- the next day. What should he sing about? Sachs is invited to perform his patriotic her lord or peasant doesn’t matter here’ says Manly virtues or women’s tenderness? Or poem and song, which draws enthusiastic Wagner’s Sachs, ‘Here it is only a questi- the joy of love that makes the heart beat ‘bravos’ from the crowd. Eoban then per- on of art’. Steffen is class-conscious in a faster? What was it that made him turn to forms his song, provoking gales of laughter way that Pogner is not. Indeed, Pogner’s poetry? Love’s happiness, and the father- for his clumsy account of Absolom being motivation for offering that which he va- land.’ This combination of love and father- caught by his beautiful long hair in a tree lues most – including his daughter – is not land is proclaimed repeatedly by Sachs, no- (and summarily executed). This anticipa- to acquire a socially acceptable son-in-law tably in his prize song. Sachs is overwhel- tes Beckmesser’s mangled, half-remembe- but to respond to the accusation that Nu- med by the realization that the emperor red lines: ‘on airy paths I scarcely hang from remberg values its commerce more high- has him in his thoughts, and this becomes the tree’ and the crowd’s aside that ‘He’ll ly than its art. a recurring and consoling theme throug- soon hang from the gallows, the gallows!’ Lortzing’s opera concludes with the peop- hout the work. Undeterred, Meister Steffen in his noblest le praising the emperor, but Wagner rep- The Wahn-monologue has a counter- ‘Pogner’ voice awards Kunigunde’s hand to laces the figure of Maximilian with Sachs, part in Lortzing’s opera in Sachs’s Act One Eoban, much to the crowd’s astonishment and Sachs’s roles as lover and artist are gi- monologue: ’Wo bist du, Sachs? Hat mit ein and Sachs’s despair. ven to Walther. So, it is a poet, not an em- Traum umfangen?’ (Where are you, Sachs? In Act Three, Eoban is obliged to per- peror – art, not politics – that brings about In the midst of a dream?’) form before the Emperor the poem he had the happy ending of Die Meistersinger von claimed as his own work. However, his Nürnberg. bungled performance as he steals quick 26 Wagneriaani benefactors was Meyerbeer. Today Gyro- ter der Stadt der Reichsparteitag in Nurem- wetz is all but forgotten. berg), prepared for the centenary celebra- Gyrowetz developed a warm relation- tions of 1940 and tailored to Nazi propa- ship with Mozart and befriended Beetho- ganda interests. ven. He was a pallbearer at the latter’s fu- Another live recording, in this instan- neral, and then survived him by twenty- ce using the complete 1845 text and sco- three years. His career lasted so long that re, was made in 2001 by the Osnabrück he himself began to feel like a visitor from Symphony Orchestra and Chorus of the another age – a kind of Beckmesser, kee- Metropolitan Theatre Osnabrück, con- per of the sacred flame of outmoded mu- ducted by Till Drömann, with singers Ge- sical styles. Wagner makes no mention of rard Quinn, Michail Milanov, Kate Radmi- Gyrowetz, although he must have known lovic, Marlene Mild, Ulrich Wand, Mark of him as the composer of some 30 operas, Hamman, Hans-Hermann Ehrich and Sil- 28 ballets, 40 symphonies, 11 masses and vio Heil. The text and score for this recor- a vast number of chamber works. ding were assembled from autograph sour- In his Singspiel, the fifty-year-old Sachs ces by Antje Müller, Frieder Reiningha- helps a younger man to win the lady, just us and Erich Waglechner. like Wagner’s Sachs. The younger man is a nobleman who has sought Sachs’s help 1 Jürgen Lodemann, Lortzing, Gaukler in becoming a Mastersinger – like Walther und Musiker, Steidl, 2000. von Stolzing. One of Sachs’s monologues 2 Hugo Leichtentritt in The Musical Ti- anticipates to some extent the Wahn-mo- mes, Vol. 72, No 1056, Feb. 1931, pp 160- nologue in Meistersinger. 161. In the Nazi years after 1933, when the What does Gyrowetz’s Singspiel sound number of Wagner performances actually like? No recording has been made of it, and decreased by more than a third in Germa- Before Wagner and Lortzing Adalbert Gyro- it hasn’t been revived in modern times, but ny, the number of Lortzing performances in- wetz wrote a Singspiel about Hans Sachs. we do know that he modelled his compo- creased dramatically. It was the reassuring sition style on that of Josef Haydn, whom appeal of the Volksoper (the light opera Die Meistersinger is the Midsummer Night’s he idolized and knew well. Indeed, one of tradition cultivated assiduously by the re- Dream and Merry Wives of Windsor of the his symphonies was mistakenly attributed gime) that was most in tune with those ti- Wagnerian canon, and much else besides. to Haydn. He composed about 100 songs, mes, not the Schopenhauerean world of Its score is a miracle of musical inventi- and the 21 year-old Eduard Hanslick, who Wagnerian music drama. on and its libretto one of the great works met him in 1846, wrote: ‘I was thrilled to 3 Figures published by the Deutscher of theatrical poetry. However, there is no make the acquaintance of the venerable Bühnenverein, covering all the theatres doubt that Wagner owed more than a few man who had been a friend of Mozart and in Germany, Austria and dramatic ideas to Lortzing’s Hans Sachs Haydn and whose operas and ballets had German-speaking Switzerland. (as Lortzing did to preceding works). It is flourished in Germany and Italy for deca- 4 Fewer than thirty performances are clear too that certain controversial featu- des. Every morning he composed a song, scheduled for 2008, in Germany and the res in the characterisation and treatment of and he presented to me the latest egg, just United Kingdom. Beckmesser have their origins in Lortzing’s new-laid, inviting me to a meal with him 5 Caroline Henriette Charlotte Elster- comic opera of 1840 and the theatrical tra- next day at midday sharp.’ Hanslick, who mann-Lortzing (1809-1871) married (Karl) ditions from which it sprang. was also a native of Bohemia, once remar- August Röckel in December 1840. She was ked that musical history began with Mo- the foster-daughter of Johann Friedrich zart and culminated in Beethoven, Schu- Lortzing (Albert’s uncle and an actor and Postscript mann and Brahms. So he would certainly associate of Goethe). Her mother was Bea- Before Wagner and Lortzing there was Adal- have approved of Gyrowetz. te Elstermann. Wagner in Mein Leben refers bert Gyrowetz, a Bohemian composer who, Hans Sachs in Later Life had been plan- to the composer Lortzing as Röckel’s brot- at the age of 71, wrote a ‘Romantic, Co- ned for Dresden in 1833 but doesn’t seem her-in-law, which is not correct, but there mic Singspiel in Two Acts’ called Hans Sa- to have been performed there until the was a family connection. chs im vorgerückten Alter (Hans Sachs in La- following year. It would be nice to imagi- 6 A Communication to my Friends, 1851, ter Life). This was completed in 1834, the ne Wagner coming across the score in the tr. William Ashton Ellis, University of Neb- year of Wagner’s Die Feen. Coming from theatre archives when he took up his post raska Press, p.329. a musical family, Gyrowetz started life as in 1842, but to date, no evidence has been 7 Berthold Kellermann, quoted in Ro- a lawyer and linguist, which enabled him found to support this. nald Taylor, Richard Wagner, His Life, Art to acquire a post in the imperial bureauc- and Thought, Paul racy in Vienna where he had special res- *** Elek, 1979, p. 232. ponsibility for the military archives. For 8 Deinhardstein’s character was called a few years he was essentially a part-time A live recording of Lortzing’s Hans Sachs is Eoban Runge (tr. stake or supporter = pil- composer, but in 1804 he accepted a post generally available in a digital remastering lar of society?). The historical Eoban Hes- as Vice-Kapellmeister at the court theat- of a 1950 mono recording featuring Max se was quite unlike his operatic namesa- res, and his course was set. Importantly, he Loy conducting the Nürnberger Singge- ke and was a poet of Nuremberg. He was a nearly always had a paying job until his re- meinschaft and Fränkisches Landesorches- confidant of Martin Luther and accompa- tirement in 1831, and he became one of ter, and singers Karl Schmitt-Walter, Al- nied him to Rome in 1519. the most revered figures in Vienna’s musi- bert Vogler, Max Kohl, Friederike Sailer, 9 Dieter Borchmeyer, Drama and the cal life. He lived to be 87, and although his Margot Weindl, Karl Mikorey and Richard World of Richard Wagner, trans. Daphne El- final years were rather lean financially, his Wölker. Notwithstanding the high qua- lis, Princeton, 2003, friends, who regarded him as a living link lity of the performances, this is an abrid- pp. 189-190. with Haydn and Mozart, made sure that he ged and adapted version by Max Loy and 10 ibid. didn’t go short. One of his most generous Willi Hanke (Schauspielhaus of the Thea- 11 ibid. p. 138. Wagneriaani 27