The quest for the gesamtkunstwark

The source of this uniqueness lies, I believe, in Wagner’s spectacular success in articulating a lofty vision by means of a fusion or synthesis of two major art forms, drama and music..

The QuesT for The

Gesamtkunstwerk

and richard Wagner

The QuesT for The

and richard Wagner

hilda meldrum broWn

1

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it is a pleasure to record my gratitude to a number of friends, colleagues, and institutions during the genesis of this book for financial support i am espe-cially indebted to the leverhulme Trust for the award of an emeritus fellowship and to drue heinz, dbe, for the award of a hawthornden fellowship which carried with it the luxury of a ‘Writer’s retreat’ at hawthornden castle near edinburgh and enabled me to bring it all to a conclusion

for sympathetic support for my interdisciplinary approach to Wagner

i have been especially indebted in the early stages to the late dr derrick Puffett and to the late Professor Peter branscombe further assistance on mat-ters musical and Wagnerian was generously supplied by Prof reinhard strohm (oxford), Prof hans rudolf Vaget (smith college, massachusetts), and barry millington (london), while dr roger allen (oxford) has been a never-failing ally on musicological points and has shared with me his encyclo-pedic knowledge and irrepressible enthusiasm for the richness of Wagner’s scores fellow germanists with musical antennae have always been ready with their support; among these Professor dr hans Joachim Kreutzer (munich) has, as ever, been a tower of strength, as too have Prof martin swales (london) and Prof ricarda schmidt (exeter) special thanks are due to dr uwe Quilitzsch (dessau-Wörlitzer gartenreich) who initiated me into the glo-ries of this wonderful garden, acting as my cicerone over two whole days.for technical assistance i owe an immense debt of gratitude to dr amy Zavatsky (oxford), who has surmounted every kind of problem (and they have not been few!) with panache mr Peter hall (oxford) has produced impecca-ble transcriptions of my musical examples for which i am also extremely grateful

an enterprise like this calls on special moral support from friends: rosemary and michál giedroyc´, the late margaret Jacobs, elizabeth llewellyn-smith, dr daniel greineder, and dr ernst Zillekens have always been at the ready to encourage progress and to root out any signs of flagging

on the Gesamtkunstwerk for this they deserve my very special thanks, as

does sophie goldsworthy (ouP) for her advice and encouragement.finally, i have to record the happy coincidence of the unfolding of the

now celebrated performances of the ring in nearby longborough which,

opera by opera, culminated in 2013, the bicentenary of Wagner’s birth, with

a complete performance of all four operas, almost, but not quite in sync with the unrolling of my book chapters i have lizzie and martin graham—and of course anthony negus—to thank for this truly inspiring event which came at just the right time

h m b

i approaches to the Gesamtkunstwerk

before Wagner

3 goethe’s Faust: Gesamtkunstwerk or universaltheater? 59

ii Wagner and the Gesamtkunstwerk:

moment and motiv

4 eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Theoretical approaches 87

5 moment and motiv: critical approaches to the ring cycle 112

iii Wagner, the Gesamtkunstwerk, and Performance of the ring

7 adolphe appia: a Watershed in the evolution of

the Gesamtkunstwerk 173

8 Wieland Wagner: The appia heritage and the Gesamtkunstwerk 188

9 The centenary ring: deconstruction and the Gesamtkunstwerk 222

conclusion 263

appendix—the Genesis of Goethe’s faust 271 Bibliography 273 Index 283

List of Figures and Plates

3.1 erscheinung des erdgeistes (appearance of earth spirit) drawing

by carl Zimmermann, lithograph by K loeillot de mars (1835) 78 reproduced by kind permission of Klassik stiftung Weimar/

herzogin anna amalia bibliothek

4.1 Laocoön and His sons, marble, c.50–20 bc (museo Pio-clementino

(Vatican museums), Vatican city) 93 © marie-lan nguyen (2009)

4.2 detail from Laocoön and His sons, marble, c.50–20 bc

(museo Pio-clementino (Vatican museums), Vatican city) 94 © marie-lan nguyen (2009)

4.3 Wagner’s diagram to explain his progression of ideas in Oper

und Drama 110

6.1 ‘erda bids Thee beware’, illustration from the rhinegold and

the Valkyrie, arthur rackham (1910) 145 reproduced by kind permission of The bodleian libraries,

The university of oxford, (Vet.) 3874 d 20/1, opp p 66

7.1 appia’s schematic representation of his ‘hierarchical principle’

german version, french version, english version 178

8.1 sketch for Das rheingold, scenes ii and iv, by Wieland Wagner

reproduced by kind permission of nationalarchiv der richard-

Wagner-stiftung, bayreuth mit Zustiftung Wolfgang Wagner

8.2 sketch for Das rheingold, scene i, by adolphe appia (basel, 1924) 196

8.3 set for Die walküre, act i (bayreuth 1957) 209

8.4 set for Die walküre, act i (bayreuth 1965) 210

8.5 brünnhilde’s oath, Götterdämmerung, act ii (bayreuth, 1957) 212reproduced by kind permission of nationalarchiv der richard-

Wagner-stiftung, bayreuth mit Zustiftung Wolfgang Wagner

8.6 brünnhilde’s oath, Götterdämmerung, act ii (bayreuth, 1965) 214

9.1 windsor Castle, by J W m Turner, watercolour on paper (c.1828) 251

reproduced by kind permission of The british museum

Plates

1 Wörlitz Toleranzblick: view over the golden urn

© Kulturstiftung dessauWörlitz Photo: heinz fräßdorf

2 Der kleine morgen, by Philipp otto runge, oil on canvas (1808)

© bpk—bildagentur für Kunst, Kultur und geschichte, berlin/hamburger Kunsthalle

3 (a) Laocoön and His sons, marble, c.50–20 bc (museo Pio-clementino (Vatican museums), Vatican city); (b) detail from Laocoön and His sons

© marie-lan nguyen (2009)

4 windsor Castle, by J W m Turner, watercolour on paper (c.1828)

reproduced by kind permission of The british museum

appia, Œc adolphe appia, Œuvres complètes, ed marie l bablet-hahn

(bonstetten: l’Âge d’homme, 1986.)

goethe, sw-ma Johann Wolfgang goethe, sämtliche werke nach epochen seines

schaffens, münchener ausgabe, 21 vols (munich: btb Verlag, 2006).

hoffmann, sw e T a hoffmann, sämtliche werke, 6 vols (frankfurt am main:

deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985–2004)

lessing, Lw gotthold ephraim lessing, Lessings werke, ed franz

bornmüller, 5 vols (leipzig and Vienna: bibliographisches institut, n.d.)

Wagner, ee richard Wagner, edition eulenburg musical scores of Der ring

des nibelungen:

Das rheingold (WWV 86 a, ed egon Voss, edition eulenburg

no 8059; london: ernst eulenberg, 2002)

Die walküre (WWV 86 b, ed christa Jost, edition eulenburg

no 8055; london: ernst eulenberg, 2009)

siegfried (WWV 86 c, eds Klaus döge and egon Voss, edition

eulenburg no 8056-01; london: ernst eulenberg, 2013)

Götterdämmerung (WWV 86 d, ed hartmut fladt, edition

eulenburg no 8057; london: ernst eulenberg, 2003)

Wagner, GsD richard Wagner, (Gesammelte) schriften und Dichtungen von

richard wagner, 9 vols (leipzig: siegel, n.d.).

a note about musical examples

musical examples are based on the piano reductions by otto singer, (leipzig: breitkopf & härtel, n.d.) and Karl Klindworth, (mainz: b schotts söhne, n.d.) all german-english translations from the score are by ernest newman

Introduction The Nature of the Quest

Why does Wagner inspire so much debate and evoke so much

contro-versy? No other opera composer—not even Mozart, Verdi, or Puccini—has ever produced a comparable response

The answer, I argue, lies in the fact that as an opera composer Wagner is

unique His mature operas, especially the Ring cycle, have no counterpart in

the musical arts Many enthusiasts sense this (though their enjoyment would not invariably be enhanced by delving into the reasons) The source of this uniqueness lies, I believe, in Wagner’s spectacular success in articulating a lofty vision by means of a fusion or synthesis of two major art forms, drama and music The distinctive term for this has come, by devious routes, and not entirely as Wagner himself intended,1 to be Gesamtkunstwerk Various other

attempts at synthesis or fusion of different art forms, knowingly or not, had been attempted before him in German opera of the 19th century, as well as in those other combinations of the arts which form the first part of this book, for example, landscape gardening and the visual arts Wagner, however, suc-ceeded in developing techniques which radically transformed the make-up and scope of the genre of opera from the format in which it had traditionally existed, and which had developed in Italy and France since the 17th century.Two major ingredients stand out of Wagner’s operatic revolution (which

is most amply exemplified in the Ring cycle) Firstly, the creation over the entire tetralogy of a ‘web’ of interconnected musical Motive2—generally short phrases, capable of considerable melodic and harmonic development

1 As will become evident from my argument, a salient feature of the term gesamt lies not in the notion of a plurality of art forms, but rather a completeness of the process of integration or fusion of two

or more major forms.

2 I use the German word Motiv (plural: Motive) throughout to avoid confusion with ‘motif ’ and

‘motive’ For a clarification of the terminology in general, see Thomas Grey, Wagner’s Musical

Prose (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 319–26.

Through their contextual associations these Motive acquire meaning and

dra-matic import Wagner’s second revolutionary innovation is his transformation

of the orchestra into a major vehicle for the transmission of these motivic networks, whereby it assumes the role of a commenting ‘voice’ responding to the action as it unfolds These twin innovations, reinforced by the application

of subject matter based on a highly individualized form of mythology, power

a comprehensive vision of the human condition and its relation to external forces, a vision which is communicated with an intensity of utterance and a range of expressiveness—nowhere more evident than in the orchestration—hitherto unparalleled in the history of opera The grandness of the total effect

is commensurate with Wagner’s ambition to create a modern equivalent to

Greek tragedy, specifically Aeschylus’ great trilogies, the Oresteia and, to a lesser extent, the Prometheus To his mind these dramas constituted models of what he had on one occasion in his early writings termed the Gesamtkunstwerk,

being examples of a harmonious fusion of their individual components—which in the case of the Greek tragedians were dance, music, and drama According to Wagner, this success of the ancients could act as a model to modern artists, encouraging them to engage in a Quest to bring about, in a suitably updated form, a similar process of integration of those major art forms, music and drama, which were considered to be especially suitable The acquisition of separate, clearly defined boundaries between these art forms, it seemed, had in no way staved off their present-day decline—and the remedy seemed clear In first setting out this idea in theoretical form, Wagner attached

to it a utopian dimension, according to which the new drama form was to

be a vehicle for social change This would later rebound and leave him open

to much misunderstanding when the idealistic programme for music drama outlined in his theoretical writings remained fairly constant, even as his polit-ical and revolutionary zeal yielded to a more sober reflection, and by 1854 the quietist philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer had come to replace the politi-cal fervour of Bakunin and Marx

Unlike the specialized and distinct art forms of literature and music, opera, as a ‘hybrid’ form, appears not to have developed the critical tools appropriate to its specific ‘joint’ needs and, most especially, to fit the com-plex case of Wagner’s music dramas A more serious problem which has recently arisen is that, with the advent of critical theory in all its various, fragmented guises, aesthetic theory and contemporary trends in the arts have now moved well beyond notions of distinctive genres The conse-quence is that from this new theoretical perspective no bounds or barriers

exist, nor challenges of the kind that Wagner was addressing in devising intricate ways in which to bridge the separate art forms in his recreation

of a hybrid Gesamtkunstwerk A particularly striking feature of this cultural

revolution is its approach to the past As with the ideas of the French Revolutionaries, the past has no valency when the present considers itself superior to all that has ever been achieved in the realms of culture

Even before this situation had arisen and traditional scholarship had been seriously discredited, the special problems of methodology posed by joint or

‘hybrid’ forms such as opera in critical analysis had been identified by ing Wagner scholars, such as Arnold Whittall and Carolyn Abbate The for-mer sums up in general terms the position of analysis of large-scale musical compositions with texts, and in particular the case of Wagner’s operas, as being in an ‘even more primitive state than analysis of symphonic music’.3

lead-The latter notes in her article on ‘Analysis’ in the New Grove Dictionary of

Opera that ‘opera combines three basic systems’ but no ‘analytical

method-ology’ has yet been developed that is ‘capable of discussing these as they exist

in an ideal experiential reality, as aspects of a single and simultaneously ceived entity’.4

per-Since these doubts about methodologies were raised, few signs of ment have emerged in the reception of Wagner’s works towards bridging the ever-increasing gap in the critical evaluation of the two art forms which Wagner

improve-so assiduously brought together to form his music drama Decon struction, and other related forms of critical theory which have played such a dominant role

in literary studies over the past 40 years or so, have not addressed the problem convincingly when applying these theories to opera No portmanteau theory has been forthcoming which can do service to a Quest for making common cause across the arts, while retaining their distinctive qualities Consequently, the ‘complex simultaneities of opera’ (Abbate) remain unresolved

Since many branches of critical theory originate in philosophies dating from the 1970s, in particular the works of Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, and since they and their followers had originally used the novel as the basis for their theorizings, it would be surprising if a breakthrough could have been achieved in applying these approaches convincingly to

3 Arnold Whittall, ‘Wagner’s Great Transition from Lohengrin to Das Rheingold’, Musical Analysis,

2/3 (1983), 269.

4 Carolyn Abbate, ‘Analysis’, in Stanley Sadie (ed.), The New Grove Dictonary of Opera (London:

Macmillan, 1992), i 116–20, here 118.

such a complex poeto-musical art form as opera Drama, in particular, (which, of course, is at the heart of any operatic libretto text) has proved for theorists to be a particularly hard nut to crack, the approach via semiotics5

being especially weak and unconvincing From the angle of operatic duction, where all the critical problems come to a head, the answer offered

pro-to explain the lack of progress in achieving an appropriate ‘analytical

meth-odology’ would seem to rest, entirely and inevitably, with the Zeitgeist As

Patrick Carnegy explains:

The dominant strategy for staging Wagner is still essentially analytic and ical, and it is one in which design is playing a major role Its rationale is that the distance between ourselves and Wagner is now so great that any attempt

crit-to capture or recreate a unifying vision that Wagner might have recognized is impossible.6

The present study is written from a rather different position than that of resignation to the status quo as implied by Carnegy in the extract just quoted

It is based on the assumption that there is still room for building on the many

useful insights into the Ring which have come down to us from our

prede-cessors (who were not always wrong) and those who are still working in the field There is surely room for more inclusive approaches, which draw on the interaction of the respective art forms implicit in the concept of the

Gesamtkunstwerk, thus broadening the scope of the old ‘Words versus Music’

debate and presenting it in a new light This debate has never really been concluded, and probably never will be, but that does not mean that it cannot

be updated The contribution to the debate by Pierre Boulez, for example, a commentator with impeccable credentials as a theorist, some of whose writ-ings are discussed in Chapter 9, is testimony to the resilience of this issue in late 20th-century Wagner scholarship As a fellow composer, full of admira-tion for Wagner’s musical wizardry and versatility in the field of music drama, Boulez could certainly be accredited with approaching Wagner’s works through eyes which—as much as those of the deconstructionists and others—see things differently from those of previous generations, but without the wholesale rejection (or tabula rasa) which has become de rigueur, and comes automatically in much contemporary criticism

5 An example is J.-J Nattiez’s laborious effort to demonstrate the ‘tripartite conception of

semi-ology’ in Barry Millington and Stewart Spencer (eds.), Wagner in Performance (New Haven and

London: Yale University Press, 1992), 75–98, here 80.

6 Patrick Carnegy, ‘Designing Wagner’, in Millington and Spencer (eds.), Wagner in Performance, 73.

Some of the problems and suggested approaches to them can be rized as follows: firstly, musicological analysis cannot avoid dealing with the basic ‘grammar’ of music, that is, melody and harmony It is a self-contained, highly technical discipline Cases, as in opera, where the music enters into a close relationship with other art forms, for example, drama, cannot, however,

summa-be fully interpreted by musical analysis alone On the other hand, in the case

of the Ring, neither is it sufficient to focus on ‘extramusical’ approaches,

whether literary, philosophical, or political, without, at some level, having regard for and contact with the substantial contribution of music and its function within the work as a whole Wagner’s presentation certainly constitutes a serious challenge to interpreters and critics In our attempts to juggle the various artistic disciplines involved—verbal, musical, and dramatic—we can-not as critics expect to match his own virtuosity as a master of the process of fusion, but neither should we shirk trying reclaim the sense of wholeness (or

Gestalt, as Boulez puts it, using this term from cognitive psychology in a

met-aphorical sense,7) which is shared by many Wagner enthusiasts when listening

to great recordings or experiencing an imaginatively presented live

perfor-mance in the opera house To peel the Ring off in segments, whether in the

theatre or verbally, simply leaves audiences or readers frustrated and puzzled.Secondly, Wagner has himself provided us with a number of routes which

might be taken in approaching the Ring There is the evidence and guidance which can be extracted from his theoretical works, especially Oper und Drama (1851) and Über die Anwendung der Musik (1879) The first of these was written

not only to help the composer to articulate his new, revolutionary gramme, at the same time as he was writing the libretto for ‘Siegfried’s Tod’, but also with an eye on his potential audience, which had been reared on Rossini and Meyerbeer The second essay is in many ways a reinforcement and restatement of those key principles expounded in the first piece but from the retrospective standpoint of the near fulfilment of his major life’s work (by

pro-1879 Parsifal was nearly complete) Long ignored, parodied, or derided

because of Wagner’s often tortuous syntax, and not helped by out-of-date translations, some of the key essays are now gradually appearing in the form

of new, updated editions and translations.8 Oper und Drama, arguably the

most challenging of them all, however, still awaits its deliverance This treatise

7 See Ch 9.

8 Two important additions have recently appeared: Roger Allen, Richard Wagner’s ‘Beethoven’

(1870), a new trans (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2014), and The Artwork of the Future, a new trans

by Emma Warner, Wagner Journal (special issue, 2013).

contains Wagner’s most detailed analysis of the process of fusion of the two main art forms involved, and was regarded by Wagner in his later years as the most authoritative text he could recommend to interested inquirers.

The theoretical works, and especially Oper und Drama, are a major source

of information about Wagner’s invention of the leitmotivic web (Gewebe), one of the most revolutionary concepts in his entire œuvre It has certainly

not been entirely ignored in recent Wagner studies, for example, those of Thomas Grey.9 What has not been fully developed, however, is the extent to which this brilliant bridging device, linking words and music together, is intricately bound up with the ongoing, developing dramatic action of the

Ring In Chapters 5 and 6, I aim to describe how deeply the motivic patterns

are embedded in the structural development of the tetralogy and, specifically, contribute to its gradual adoption of the contours of a tragic enactment To assist in illuminating this process, I have investigated the neglected role of the

concept of Moment alongside the more familiar Motiv, as expounded in Oper

und Drama In order to identify the specific way in which Wagner is using the

term throughout this text, I have in Chapter 4 traced its evolution as a critical concept more generally in German writings from the 18th century onwards which were known to Wagner

On the basis of a sample of analyses of the Ring, Chapter 5 aims to identify the signs of a movement towards the application of Moment and Motiv as a

joint critical concept Whether the distinguished authors of the analyses cussed here have consciously or unconsciously adopted Wagner’s own link

dis-between Moment and Motiv is unclear While using a range of other critical

criteria in their very different essays, they do, however, to varying degrees, seem to be bringing this connection to bear when dealing with both the dra-matic and the verbal aspects alongside the musical In Chapter 6, which pre-sents a comparison of the two Erda scenes along similar, possibly more ‘joint’ lines, I have added to the more musically orientated approaches appearing in Chapter 5 my own specimen approach, which may bear signs of its literary origins, but also an attempt to combine these with some, hopefully not inap-propriate, musical observations In identifying Wagner’s skill in processing

the means of Vermischung (fusion) of music and drama/text these different

approaches, literary and musicological, may be moving along similar lines

If Chapters 4, 5, and 6 illustrate, in the form of an experimental analysis, how the different elements of text, music, and the dramatic can be brought closely

9 Wagner’s Musical Prose.

together in critical approaches to the Ring in the light of Wagner’s own als for combining Moment and Motiv, Chapters 7, 8, and 9 are concerned with the more public aspect of the reception process—the performance of the Ring

propos-in the 20th century In three major phases between the 1890s and 1976 and set

against the measuring rod of the Gesamtkunstwerk and Wagner’s ideal of ‘fusion’,

these chapters demonstrate a steady weakening of the concept as a lodestar for performance To be sure, Adolphe Appia enthusiastically accepted Wagner’s idea of fusion of text and music in what he termed ‘Le Wort-Tondrama’ But this enthusiasm is, nonetheless, tempered by his deep concern about the omission from all Wagner’s theoretical writings of any detailed presentation of the production side of performance Appia’s account, as presented in dia-grammatic form, can be regarded as a ‘correction’ or ‘alternative’ to Wagner’s

own schema, which was originally appended to Oper und Drama It is based on

his own theories for inclusion of the—for Appia—crucially important aspect of stagecraft In attempting to define Appia’s legacy, it is this emphasis on stag-ing, and the daring alternatives he suggested in his sketches to accompany Wagner’s music dramas, which posterity has seized on Appia, however, has much to say that is illuminating about Wagner’s music and its dramatic quality

In Chapter  8, the work of Wieland Wagner, so markedly indebted to

Appia’s theories, reflects Wieland’s ambivalence about the Gesamtkunstwerk

concept (while experimenting with the idea of fusion of words and music) This is largely, but not entirely, because of Wieland’s own tangled relation-ship with his past, and the association he made between the concept of the

Gesamtkunstwerk and the audiences who had applauded the ultra-realistic

productions of Wagner’s works during the Old Bayreuth period under Cosima Wagner’s stewardship Building on Appia’s insistence on the impor-tance of the stage accompaniments and technical effects such as lighting which make up the performance, Wieland places this on an equal footing with Wagner’s original pair, words and music Finally, Chapter  9, which

focuses on the so-called ‘Centenary Ring’ (1976), illustrates how staging has

increasingly become a major constituent of operatic performance A opment, which had originally been sparked off by Appia around 1900, was indeed by 1976 assuming such importance that the regisseur, Patrice Chéreau, could overturn Appia’s original prioritization of music within the mixture

devel-of ingredients The filming devel-of this performance and its worldwide tion, would appear to have confirmed the general sense of the visual ascend-ency of the production This is combined with an alignment of Chéreau’s

circula-Regie—eclectic in style—to postmodernist and deconstructionist sources,

among others (for example, Brecht) While this Ring is nowadays popularly referred to as the ‘Chéreau Ring’, its distinguished conductor, the composer

Pierre Boulez, in his own considerable body of theoretical writings, presents

a rather different approach to Wagner’s Ring from that of the regisseur,

though how far this difference of outlook might have been reflected in the

musical production of the Bayreuth Ring is difficult to determine.

Chapters 4–9 are all concerned with Wagner’s Ring and its relationship to the theme of fusion within the Gesamtkunstwerk In Chapters 1–3, however, the net

is cast beyond art forms which focus on words and music, and a step back is taken from Wagner’s mid-19th-century pedestal and seeming monopoly of the concept to determine whether it might also have had currency in some earlier examples, this time based on various combinations of art forms, such as land-scape gardening (Chapter 1) and the visual arts (Chapter 2), or, alternatively

(Chapter 3), on a massive, completed dramatic poem (like Goethe’s Faust) whose

creator made determined but vain attempts to unlock its operatic potential

To focus on works of outstanding distinction—despite, in some cases,

incom-pleteness—in the light of the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk seems to me a

more fruitful approach than attempting to identify the small steps by means of which minor composers could wean German opera away from Wagner’s own

bêtes noires, the French and Italian models, via such devices as Melodram or the sporadic use of illustrative Leitmotiv That, conceivably, might have brought com-

posers like E T A Hoffmann, Heinrich Marschner, and Carl Maria von Weber

a shade closer to achieving music drama (though most found it difficult to shake

free of their native Singspiel and spoken dialogue) But to compare Undine, Der

Vampyr, or even Der Freischütz (the most interesting and only surviving relic of

German Romantic opera which is still in the repertoire), with Wagner’s

large-scale innovations in opera such as Durchkomponierung, unendliche Melodie, a

leit-motivic web which extends over the entire trilogy, revolutionary orchestration involving the creation of new instruments—all combined with dramatic skills

of the highest order—is to confuse pygmies with a giant.10

10 Exhaustive and expert studies on the development of German music drama already exist See John

Warrack, German Romantic Opera: From the Beginnings to Wagner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) and Siegfried Goslich, Die romantische Oper (Tutzing: Schneider, 1975) Composers like

E T A Hoffmann (Undine, 1826), Ludwig Spohr (Faust, 1816), Heinrich Marschner (Der Vampyr, 1828), and Carl Maria von Weber (Der Freischütz, 1821) may well have made modest contributions

to the general process of liberation and greater expressive freedom of opera from the stranglehold

of the Italian and French models However, to my knowledge they have never been credited with

having produced a Gesamtkunstwerk of the kind which is the subject of this study Even if all the

incremental changes they introduced were integrated, the gulf separating them from Richard

Wagner’s conception and realization of the Gesamtkunstwerk would be immense.

In lieu of this I have, therefore, chosen to focus on a few free-standing

examples of what, according to my definition of Gesamtkunstwerk, might be

construed as a small group of candidates who were knocking at the door, though for various reasons, mostly through chance, some narrowly failed to succeed Thus Chapter 1 argues the case for considering outstanding examples

of 18th-century landscape gardening, both English and German, as uring up in terms of artistry, diversity of genres, and substance (as well as public accessibility) to achievements commensurate with the demands of

meas-the Gesamtkunstwerk Chapter 2 addresses examples of ‘mixed’ genres from

German romanticism to assess their ‘candidature’ Contrary to expectation, and despite a body of strongly promulgated theoretical writings which opened the door wide to interdisciplinary experimentation, the results in this context are meagre Artists of sufficient calibre to excel in the strongly structured gen-res such as drama just did not exist (though a great many dramas were writ-

ten) Romantic drama also rules itself out of Gesamtkunstwerk status by turning

its back on the stage, having responded to the call for ‘mixing’ genres by

vir-tually becoming a variant of the novel, the Lesedrama (drama for reading).

Instead I have chosen to consider the work of Philipp Otto Runge, a Romantic artist whose work, though incomplete, is so promising and inno-

vative, and, from his ambitious unfinished cycle Die Tageszeiten, a tetralogy involving the four times of day, have selected his masterpiece, Der kleine

Morgen This painting illustrates the depth, breadth, and intensity of Runge’s

visual imagination and the originality of his technique, such as his use of the frame as an integral, commenting part of the whole composition To illuminate the theoretical basis for Runge’s unashamedly symbolic, forward-looking, and non-representational artistic imagery, I briefly discuss his corre spondence and planned collaboration with the Romantic poet Clemens Brentano and their illuminating discussions on the role of symbolism in the relationship between text and image in book illustration

Chapter 3 on Goethe’s Faust which follows is included for several

rea-sons Ironically, this greatest of creative artists, whose lyric poetry has been set by countless composers, came up against major problems in his numer-

ous efforts, extending over a lifetime, to set his enormous drama Faust to

music This was a project which, bearing such a pedigree, might have been

thought to be set fair to become a Gesamtkunstwerk The explanations for

this non-event are complex, but, in the context of an examination of the concept itself, highly instructive, in terms both of Goethe’s personal creativ-ity and of fundamental aesthetic issues concerning the relationship between words and music By investigating the background to a series of partial and

failed collaborations between the poet and a number of different ers, including a near-miss collaboration with Beethoven, light can be shone

compos-on some of the main obstacles—both perscompos-onal and aesthetic—which stood

in the way of Faust being set to music on the scale Goethe intended This

analysis in turn serves to highlight the specific criteria and boundaries

which define the Gesamtkunstwerk.

Illuminating here is the question of collaboration Goethe’s own ingness to collaborate with either a librettist or a composer of high quality, can be traced to a fear he shared with other artist-collaborators that his poetic texts might lose out to music if they entered into a close alliance with a poeto- dramatic text or, alternatively, were to be brutally stripped down to libretto format By taking—and, unlike most creative artists, being equipped to take—sole charge of the entire process himself, Wagner had the answer to this prob-lem However, for historical reasons, and in Goethe’s defence, it is questionable

unwill-whether a Gesamtkunstwerk involving music could have succeeded prior to

Wagner The form of music drama was still in an embryo state, and composers

of distinction—apart from Beethoven—were in such short supply

Chapters 1–3 examine combinations based on the visual arts as well as the musical and the verbal, using as examples works of quality and distinction

which come close to achieving the status of Gesamtkunstwerk They also raise

the question whether any features might be held in common across the different genres which help to clarify the concept further This matter will

be addressed in the Conclusion

Finally, we come to the question of definitions In the context of Das

Kunstwerk der Zukunft, Wagner had used the term Gesamtkunstwerk to

emphasize the idea of synthesis or fusion of different art forms, and to mote the idea that this ‘reunion’ of what for the Greeks had been a natural process of integration might have a rejuvenating effect on latter-day Western culture (and, specifically, German opera) Fusion between different art forms

pro-within the Gesamtkunstwerk, and the means of achieving it, is at the heart of

the concept—hence its centrality throughout this book

But fusion of art forms of itself is not enough to convey all the

associa-tions and nuances which have now gathered around the term Gesamtkunstwerk Wagner coined it an early stage, when the Ring was still on the drawing

board Later, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was to become ossified by the Old Bayreuth Wagnerians

Nowadays, if, for critical purposes, we are to turn to the Gesamtkunstwerk,

we must also include the matter of performance in any criteria we lay down

(it was, of course, implicit, in the Greek example) The matter is fraught with difficulty, however, because of the ephemeral nature of this part of the pro-cess Perhaps Wagner himself realized this Performance was always on his mind, but at the more practical level of whether a suitable stage or opera

house—and good singers and a large orchestra—to accommodate the Ring

would ever be accessible to him As we know, the problem was resolved eventually and very satisfactorily by the munificence of King Ludwig II of

Bavaria in making available the finance to build the Festspielhaus according

to Wagner’s specifications Meanwhile, although it is basically a modest and

practical building, the ‘story’ of the Festspielhaus has come to assume almost

mythical status, and it has become embedded in many people’s minds as the tangible receptacle for Wagner’s ideals, and thus, by association, with the

presentation and performance of the Gesamtkunstwerk The social

dimen-sion to his art, the ‘making manifest’, was dear to his heart, and, although he abandoned his youthful ideal of making performances of his works freely available to all, it was always his wish that the ‘Bayreuth experience’ (and all that it entailed) would reach out to a wide audience and have an enriching and beneficial effect Associations with both the building and its architec-

ture, therefore, are also wrapped up in the term Gesamtkunstwerk.

As for the Quest: this reminds us of the elusive, will o’ the wisp—but

seemingly enduring—nature of the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk which has

been so eloquently summed up by Pierre Boulez Much used in the period after Wagner’s death and during the period of Cosima’s direction at Bayreuth (1883–1930), it soon ceased to function as the dynamic, interactive principle defined by Richard Wagner The generation of the 1920s were understandably disrespectful in view of the ossified Bayreuth productions with which the term had become associated, while in the 1930s it became politicized, and was hoisted up into a monumental emblem of the ‘German spirit’ It is no wonder that Wieland Wagner’s post-war generation, which had to deal with this legacy, rejected a term which had become so compromised

Perhaps enough clear water has now been created between ourselves and these past legacies and distortions, however, to enable its usefulness, or oth-erwise, to be considered dispassionately Viewed as a critical concept which

is only brought out on exceptional occasions, the Quest might seem helpful both in our appreciation of the nature and magnitude of Richard Wagner’s achievement, as well as steering us towards a better understanding of the complex relationship he created between the relevant art forms

In the course of such a reconsideration, it is timely also to distinguish

between the terms Gesamtkunstwerk and ‘multimedial’ which are fast

becom-ing synonymous In Friedrich Kittler’s much-quoted and multifarious cations on this theme,11 the development of his theory of the displacement

publi-of traditional art forms by computerized communication technologies has

led to the coining of the term Gesamtmedienkunst On another plane, the

musicologist Nicholas Cook has pioneered the application of a cross-medial theory to musical works—including in his remit the analysis of Madonna’s pop-music video of ‘Material Girl’.12 Few might disagree about the ascend-ancy of the visual in popular culture, and the comparative dethronement of the verbal in the contemporary works of our time However, when applied

to historical works of art which were produced with very different criteria

in mind to our own, one is on much weaker ground Without having to embrace Herder’s and Ranke’s ideas of historicism which might seem a shade

too remote from our sights, it could be argued that a Gesamtkunstwerk worth

its salt is fully charged to speak in its own voice across the centuries, from the Greeks onwards, and for it to be open to new generations to extract ever new inspiration from this source In short, it could be argued that approaches to

the Ring which accommodate perspectives from both present and past are

valid and welcome That, however, would demand a greater openness to the historical dimension than at present seems to be evident

Clarification of the term Gesamtkunstwerk in its original meaning, then,

would be helpful not only for scholars and commentators, but also for those involved in the musical and theatrical aspects of performance of what should

be, but often is no longer regarded as, a unique amalgamation of textual and musical material of supremely expressive force, employed in the service of themes of universal appeal and a rich characterization, and presented with a

dramatic skill comparable with the greatest Consideration of the Ring as

Gesamtkunstwerk, as my book argues, must surely involve some awareness of

the need to bring together, and illuminate, in performance as well as in ysis, some of the most fundamental features of Wagner’s legacy

anal-It is clear from the above that I regard the term Gesamtkunstwerk as an

ongoing creative concept as problematic in the 20th–21st-century context Recently, however, it has been claimed for mass culture and technology A

11 Friedrich Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, trans Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael

Wutz (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999), 23.

12 Nicholas Cook, Analyzing Musical Multimedia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 156–7.

first stage in this development has been identified by Matthew Wilson Smith13 in the Bauhaus ideal of ‘transcending’ mechanical and organic forms; from there it has been moved forward to cyberspace From this mis-application of the term firstly to applied art and secondly to technology one might infer that the time is ripe for a reappraisal!

13 Matthew Wilson Smith, The Total Work of Art: From Bayreuth to Cyberspace (New York and

London: Routledge, 2007), 5–6 ‘The next, though perhaps not the final chapter in the opment of mass culture, technology and the Gesamtkunstwerk may be found in cyberspace […] a unity of networking […] which transcends the Kantian opposition between mechanical and organic form Cyberspace performance […] ironically realizes many of the dreams of the total work of art.’

The Landscape Garden

The notion that a garden—even in the elaborate form of a landscape

garden—could be regarded as an artwork of any kind is probably miliar to many readers today (and not least to Wagnerians) In the course of this chapter, however, I shall demonstrate how, to the 18th-century connois-seur, such an appellation was deemed indisputable, and landscape gardening was firmly included among its ‘sister arts’:

unfa-Poetry, Painting, and Gardening, or the Science of Landscape, will forever by

men of taste be deemed Three Sisters, or the Three New Graces who dress and

adorn nature.1

The concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk was, of course, at this time as yet

unknown The term has been traced back to 1827 and to the theorist Eusebius Trahndorff (1782–1863)2 but did not become widespread until Wagner’s day Many studies of landscape gardening as a genre have since taken place, some of which will be referred to below Not only has its cred-ibility as an art form been confirmed, but, more importantly, certain excep-tional examples, because of their scale and their degree of artistry, have

retrospectively been deemed worthy of the title of Gesamtkunstwerk.

Some caution is required, however, in comparing such 18th-century examples with recent attempts to inject ‘meaning’ or ‘artistry’ into horticul-ture at a more superficial level—for example, ‘theme parks’ or ‘concept gar-dens’ This chapter will attempt to demonstrate, in contradistinction, why

I believe the term Gesamtkunstwerk can be justifiably reserved for some of

the choicest examples of landscape gardening from that high-water-mark era in England and the Continent This does not, however, preclude the

1 Horace Walpole, MS annotation to William Mason’s Satirical Poems, published in an edition of

the relevant poems by Paget Toynbee (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926), 43.

2 K F E Trahndorff, Ästhetik oder Lehre von der Weltanschauung und Kunst (Berlin: Maurer, 1827).

possibility that a modern or modernist garden on a similar scale might also aspire to the title.

the Eighteenth-Century Landscape Garden

The extraordinary development of landscape gardening in 18th-century England attracted the attention of poets and theorists alike The poets seized

on the phenomenon as a major theme, as witnessed by Alexander Pope’s

‘Epistle to Burlington’ of 1731:

To build, to plant, whatever you intend,

To rear the Column, or the Arch to bend,

To swell the Terras, or to sink the Grot;

In all, let Nature never be forgot.3

Pope had the advantage of being a practitioner in both fields: as the

foremost poet and satirist of his day whose works include The Rape of

the Lock, The Dunciad, and so on, and also, in 1720, having designed for

himself a fine garden at his villa in Twickenham, in which he had been able to give full rein to his developing ideas regarding the good and bad features of this burgeoning new and fashionable art form which was appearing all around the English countryside Pope’s creation—unfortu-nately later destroyed—covered a rural site of barely five acres, but man-aged to incorporate such major landscape features as axial perspectives and a substantial grotto Unlike some others (Stowe in particular), Twickenham was, however, ‘not a place that bears the high Air of State and Grandeur, and surprises you with the vastness of Expense and Magnificence; but an elegant retreat of a Poet strongly inspired with the love of Nature and Retirement’.4 Typical of this earliest phase of the

‘landscape boom’, Pope’s Arcadian inspiration is strongly reinforced by many learned allusions to pastoral themes by poets, who, as the early

3 Alexander Pope, ‘Extract From “An Epistle to Lord Burlington (1731)” ’, in John Dixon Hunt

and Peter Willis (eds.), The Genius of the Place: The Early English Landscape Garden 1620–1820 (2nd

edn., Cambridge, Mass and London: MIT Press, 1990), 212.

4 Anon., ‘An Epistolary Description of the Late Mr Pope’s House and Gardens at Twickenham

(1747)’, in Dixon Hunt and Willis (eds.), The Genius of the Place, 252.

18th century saw it, had pioneered the rustic idyll which was now so popular, Homer, Virgil, and Pliny being their major models.

The ‘landskip’ movement in England gathered such momentum (‘furor horticus’) over the period 1720–1820 that by the 1760s, in addition to a myriad of garden practitioners, it had attracted a critical mass of writers and theorists5 who were eager to follow the trajectory of what had become a full-scale movement, in which the evolution of landscape gardening could

be traced and recorded from its early Augustan classicism to pre-Romantic picturesque Inevitably, this led to debates, discussions, and sometimes to sharp disagreements, many of which would take published form, some as didactic poems and fictitious dialogues, others as prose essays The most significant of these (e.g the writings of Gilpin and Whately) increasingly registered the shift away from a mainly classical orientation, in which apt quotations from the works of the ancients were applied to sum up the spe-

cial characteristics of a particular landscape, the genius loci, frequently

expressed in terms of the Arcadian idyll The classical themes persisted, ever, as can be seen in the case of Stowe, the most frequently visited garden

how-of its day Here are to be found a plethora how-of sometime arcane allusions, no longer just apt quotations derived from mostly Roman poets (though they are a feature of many inscriptions), but also relying heavily for their inscrip-tions on a number of substantial buildings such as temples, obelisks, or arcades as vehicles for the promotion of topical themes of a political nature Stowe, the garden considered by many to be the greatest of them all, is unique in its unabashed proclamation of ‘political gardening’ This was dis-played in the ‘Temple of British Worthies’, created by its patron and co- designer, the Whig politician Richard Temple, Viscount Cobham Cobham moved in the circles of the Kit-Cat Club, a group of leading poets and wits which included Alexander Pope and William Congreve, both of whom are commemorated in effigy in the garden, though in different locations In his long period in the wilderness of political disfavour, Cobham was able to give his undivided attention to the project of landscaping the Stowe garden Arguably, in the process, he unburdened himself, and transformed his own disappointment for having had to take an enforced early ‘retirement’ from the affairs of state The ‘Temple of British Worthies’ presents a patriotic col-lection of 16 busts of miscellaneous ‘heroes’, ranging from Alfred the Great

5 Chief among the later theorists are William Gilpin, Thomas Whately, Richard Payne Knight, and Uvedale Price.

to a local Member of Parliament who was ‘on the correct side’ politically; taken together these figures have been described as ‘a veritable Whig Pantheon’.6 What may appear to purists as a travesty of the landscape ideal, not surprisingly, gave rise to some disapproval.7 At first sight it is indeed hard to reconcile the somewhat blatant promotion of the ‘Worthies’ with the notion of an Arcadian idyll While this obtrusive feature may be explained

in terms of Cobham’s desire to project an idealized counterpart to his own disgust with contemporary politics (hence, too, his satirical creation of the—ruined—‘Temple of Modern Virtue’), there is much elsewhere to admire in the landscaping of the Stowe garden, in particular those features which were the fruit of Cobham’s inspired employment as head gardener of the young Lancelot Brown, who was responsible for laying out the magnif-icent Arcadian ‘Grecian Valley’, an ideal landscape, free of buildings, and forming a transition between the garden and the wider landscape This example, however, highlights the point that the landscape garden, like many other successful artistic forms, was flexible enough to accommodate a vari-ety of styles and themes, ranging from topical, public, social, and political on the one hand, and on the other, to the more inward, solitary ‘meanderings’ and the private, reflective moments, so prized by Alexander Pope, which were promoted at Stowe by the Arcadian idyll and the ‘Elysian Fields’

The Emblematic and the Expressive

The contrasting aspects evident in landscape gardens of the 18th century have been noted by commentators, and formulated in terms of a typology:

the emblematic and the expressive Bearing in mind the example of Stowe, it

is not inconceivable, however, that a garden should contain contrasting tures, especially if, like that particular example, it had been worked and reworked by different owners and designers over a substantial period of time If the contrast in style was too obvious, the total effect and degree of enjoyment might be impaired This not infrequent phenomenon is more

fea-6 John Martin Robinson, Temples of Delight: Stowe Landscape Gardens (Andover: Pitkin Pictorials

Ltd, 1990), 91.

7 Thomas Whately (Observations on Modern Gardening (London and Dublin: T Payne, 1770), 219–

20) criticized the plethora of buildings, for instance; even such enthusiasts for the English scape ideal as C C F Hirschfeld in Germany and J J Rousseau (see n 23 in this chapter) in France were moved to criticize the artificiality of the Stowe garden.

land-likely in cases where a succession of owners and designers had made erate attempts to overturn the work of their predecessors.8 The Stowe gar-den started out in early 18th-century Augustan England, and, by the 1770s, had moved considerably in terms of style and complexity At the halfway mark of the garden’s evolution and after Lord Cobham’s death in 1749, his successor, and nephew, Earl Temple, made many changes, turning his atten-tion in particular to ‘classicizing’ the many existing buildings, and adding such pompous features as grand avenues and triumphal arches This phase represented a huge contrast to the beginnings of the garden In its earliest incarnation as a landscape garden, dating from the early 18th century, Cobham and his first landscape architect, Charles Bridgeman, had allowed vestiges of the formal parterres and emblematic inscriptions associated with 17th-century French and Italian garden style to linger on into the 1720s Later, in the 1740s, these too were replaced with the more natural, expressive style epitomized in both William Kent’s work and subsequently Brown’s more minimalist Arcadian approach Given the generous proportions and acreage of the territory, these early features had coexisted comfortably enough alongside the emblematic public statements of the ‘Worthies’ Historically, however, the ‘pomp and grandeur’ of Earl Temple’s contributions were moving against the tide, for after 1770 the trend towards the freer, pictur-esque mode, a forerunner of romanticism, became firmly established The emphasis was now on the expressive and the natural rather than the archi-tectural and wittily allusive.

delib-The influential contemporary writer and theorist on landscape, Thomas

Whately, was the first to formulate critically the principle of the expressive

in opposition to that of the emblematic:

All these devices [e.g ‘columns erected only to receive quotations’] are rather

emblematical rather than expressive; they may be ingenious contrivances, and

recall absent ideas to the recollection; but they make no immediate sion; for they must be examined, compared, perhaps explained, before the whole design of them is well understood; and though an allusion to a favour-ite or well-known subject of history, of poetry, of tradition, may now and then

impres-8 The great German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who in the 1770s had himself been closely involved in the landscaping of the ducal gardens in Weimar and those of its neighbour- ing garden at Tiefurt, includes some profound observations on this generational problem in his

novel, Die Wahlverwandtschaften (The Elective Affinities) (1808) See Hilda M Brown, ‘Goethe and the (English) Landscape-Improvers: A Theme in Die Wahlverwandtschaften’, in T J Reed, Martin Swales, and Jeremy Adler (eds.), Goethe at 250: London Symposium (Munich: Iudicium Verlag

GmbH, 2000), 131–44.

animate or dignify a scene, yet, as the subject does not naturally belong to a garden, the allusion should not be principal; it should seem to have been sug-gested by the scene: a transitory image, which irresistibly occurred; not sought for, nor laboured; and have the force of a metaphor, free from the detail of an allegory.9

The emblematic and the expressive, as described here, are aesthetic principles

which could possibly be applied to other ‘hybrid’ forms of artworks than landscape gardening which seek to intensify and enhance the spectator’s experience The distinction drawn by Whately between descriptive and sym-bolic techniques, for example, is suggestive of these same two levels on which

leitmotivic structures are based in the musical Gesamtkunstwerk (see sion of Moment/Motiv in Chapter 5) and is applicable also to the visual arts

discus-where it appears as a contrast between the decorative and the symbolic.The landscape garden at its best, according to Whately, favours ‘images not sought for, nor laboured’, and which ‘have the force of a metaphor’ In other words, where ‘allusion’ is concerned, the symbolic mode promotes subtlety, the referencing remaining implicit, while, by comparison, in its insistent spelling-out of meaning, the allegorical is laboured and pedantic

An interesting connection is thus made here between allegorical and emblematic on the one hand and symbolic and expressive on the other As already noted, the emblematic does not necessarily always exclude the expressive As Dixon Hunt suggests, ‘It’s possible that Pope would not have chosen to distinguish as sharply as Whately did between the rival kinds of garden.’ He goes on to point out how, for instance, the exquisite and beau-tifully balanced garden created by William Kent at Rousham, in Oxfordshire, could ‘provide opportunities for both “allegorical” and “metaphoric” med-itations’.10 Kent’s masterly ‘Vale of Venus’, the ‘centerpiece of the garden’ in Rousham, according to Dixon Hunt,11 does carry a hidden (emblematic) literary allusion, such as only ‘initiates’ might note The reference he has in

mind is Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Book VI:

and for the properly equipped and learned mind this encounter with Venus among the glades of Rousham would bring back with suitable propriety Spencer’s discussions of courtesy and its connections with the countryside.12

9 Whately, Observations on Modern Gardening, 151.

10 John Dixon Hunt, Gardens and the Picturesque: Studies in the History of Landscape Architecture

(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), 98.

11 Ibid 86.

12 Ibid.

Clearly, some allusions could be appreciated for their appropriateness to the context And in the context of Rousham, nothing can detract from the unaffected simplicity (or rather the ‘art that conceals art’) and sensitive han-dling of this garden’s outstanding natural features One of these is its prox-imity to the river Cherwell, and here Kent makes the utmost of the dramatic bend described by that river, when at its first sighting it is viewed from an elevated position It then takes the onlooker by surprise, offering a delight-ful prospect, whereby the eye may take a gently dipping passage down the slopes of the wooded grove towards the dramatic undulations of the river and its ‘picturesque’ bridge This garden has sometimes been described as

‘theatrical’ or as a ‘series of scenes’, and indeed, at another spot, Bridgeman, the designer, created what was termed a ‘theatre’: a small grassy amphithea-tre in a clearing of the woods But the term ‘theatrical’ in no way implies showiness or flamboyance of the kind associated with Stowe The ‘scenes’ are pastoral and unfold with a delightful fluency, linked by appropriate tran-sitional features, for instance the dainty, serpentine water-rills which con-nect ‘Venus Vale’ and the ‘Cold Bath’ and thread through a woodland path between them Such devices are reminiscent of the transitional features linking scenes in, say, a drama or opera

Two other gardens, Stourhead and Wörlitz, one English, the other German, introduce another feature of special interest relevant to a discus-sion of the nature and scope of landscape gardening as an art form Both these outstanding gardens introduce features normally associated with what Horace Walpole termed the ‘sister art’ of poetry13—here construed in its wider sense of ‘literature in general’, and thereby including narrative or dramatic features It is possibly no accident that each of these gardens was the personal vision of dedicated individuals, Henry Hoare (1705–85) and Fürst [Prince] Franz Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau (1740–1817) respectively, both of whom imbued their respective projects with an exceptional degree

of commitment, which may possibly explain the greater sense of coherence displayed in both gardens when compared with Stowe While sharing many

of the features which had almost become standard in the art of ing—that is, as well as inscriptions, buildings, temples, pantheons, obelisks, urns, grottoes, ruins, and hermitages, items of both classical and ‘Gothick’

landscap-13 See Horace Walpole, MS annotation to William Mason’s Satirical Poems: ‘Poetry, Painting and

Gardening, or the Science of Landscape, will forever by men of taste be deemed the Three

Graces’ Quoted in Dixon Hunt, Gardens and the Picturesque, 75.

provenance—these objects do not obtrude In both cases it is the natural element of water that determines the shape and structure of the garden While being laid out with circular paths on two levels, a higher and a lower, and set in rolling, wooded country, the Stourhead garden is almost entirely constructed around its lake It is planted in such a way as to bring buildings and natural features into a harmonious relationship by the creation of vari-ous cross-water prospects The Wörlitz garden is dominated by water to a greater extent than any other, possibly because of its position on a flood-plain, girdled on one side by a tributary of the river Elbe, and within its own bounds by its small lakes and blind river-arms, some formed by previous inundations, around which the buildings and landscape features are grouped

on islands and peninsulas Wörlitz is a much larger, and at first sight less compact, creation than Stourhead However, its hands-on designers, the Fürst and his friend, adviser, and architect von Erdmannsdorff, were able ingeniously to draw the whole complex together through an intricate arrangement of axial vistas and thematic connections.14 Once more, this

time through the creation (through Motiv) of a perspective, one is reminded

of techniques applicable to other art forms—not only in visual art but also scenes in drama and opera

But another principal means of providing in both gardens a sense of

unity which is characteristic of the Gesamtkunstwerk is the introduction of

an unseen fictitious narrator-figure who is in communication with his imaginary visitor (who, in Wörlitz, is given the Romantic-sounding identity

of ‘Wanderer’) This ‘narrator’ at certain points issues the Wanderer with guidelines about the manner and order in which the route is to be traversed Injunctions to a visitor or visitors are also delivered in Stourhead, but these are inferred rather than spelled out, and take the oblique form of classical

references, in this case to a passage in Book VI of Virgil’s Aeneid, placed on

the lips of the Cumaean Sibyl and delivered in Latin (the Wörlitz part, however, is delivered, significantly, in the vernacular German) In Stourhead an allusive but, by implication, (to some visitors) flattering invi-tation inscribed over the door of the ‘Temple of Flora’, urges initiates only

counter-to follow what are counter-to be presented as the journeyings of Virgil’s hero Aeneas (‘Procul, O procul este profane’ (‘Away with you, you who are uninitiated!’) );

14 Commenting on the unity of the Wörlitz garden in Gardens of Germany (London: Mitchell

Beazley, 1998), Charles Quest-Ritson notes (30): ‘The whole park was designed as a complex system of spatial relationships, with sight-lines (short and long) and groups of trees planted in the landscape style Architecture, landscaping and painting all contribute to the whole.’

these projected ‘travels’ are later revealed to involve, firstly, an imminent descent into ‘Avernus’, the underworld, where various trials await As one commentator puts it: ‘Hoare is asking you to enter his garden in the right spirit The temple is surrounded by evergreen shrubs, principally laurel, yew and rhododendron, which are meant to evoke this serious mood.’15 But, of course, he is also playing a guessing game of classical and pictorial allusion with his visitor(s) Later on, the ‘journey’ moves to the spacious, wonderfully evocative ‘Grotto’, home of the (muscular) River deity (or Father Tiber) and clearly modelled on Alexander Pope’s famous refuge at Twickenham Here too another brief allusion to Virgil’s poem occurs, in which the Grotto is defined as the ‘Nympharum domus’ (‘domain of the nymphs’), while the statue of one such slumbering beauty is accompanied by lines from Pope,

on her behalf, which could be addressed to the passing visitor: ‘Ah! Spare

my slumbers, gently tread the cave | And drink in silence or in silence lave’ Later, towards the end of the ‘circuit walk’ or peregrination, at the Pantheon, there is a hidden allusion to the ‘difficult’ choice of route ahead at this point for the visitor between a ‘demanding but rewarding, path’ and ‘an easy, but less satisfying one’ This choice prompts another learned allusion, which this time is linked symbolically to the figure of Hercules, who had appeared in the Pantheon It has been suggested16 that the topos of the ‘choice’ is inspired

by a famous picture, Nicolas Poussin’s Choice of Hercules, which was in Henry

Hoare’s picture collection

It can be seen that, through a range of mainly classical references, and a concealed ‘narrative’ in the forms of an allegory of Aeneas’ journey, Henry Hoare has given the so-called ‘circuit’ walk an interpretation and meaning, emphasizing a serious mood of contemplation and solitude He has done so

in an allusive, almost confidential, tone, as if his ‘visitor’ were among his circle of friends, possessing similar tastes and interests to his own (which was very likely the case) As with Rousham, the dominant impression in Stourhead is, however, less bound up for its effects with the allusive or emblematic features than with the sheer Arcadian beauty of the scene; there

15 Oliver Garnett, Stourhead Landscape Garden (Swindon: National Trust, 2006), 10 For fuller accounts of the Virgilian allusions, see Kenneth Woodbridge, The Stourhead Landscape (London:

National Trust, 2002), 18–21, and Max F Schulz, ‘The Circuit Walk of the Eighteenth-Century

Landscape Garden and the Pilgrim’s Progress’, (American) Eighteenth-Century Studies, 15/1

are only a few contrasts, and the tone is one of a calm serenity reminiscent

of Winckelmann’s famous description of the effect produced by Greek sculpture (‘eine edle Einfalt und stille Größe’ (‘noble simplicity and quiet greatness’) ): a central ideal in 18th-century European classicism It is doubt-ful that this superb example of landscape gardening would be deemed as exemplary as it is today, were its effect to depend on deciphering the Latin

of the Virgilian ‘riddles’—just as understanding the learned reference to

Spenser’s Faerie Queene need not enter into the spectator’s enjoyment of

what, in Rousham, is an equally rewarding experience But if the allegory is read simply as a narrative, and the circuit as a paradigm for life’s journey, a more general and accessible meaning is achieved

The Arcadian ideal was very much alive in Saxony too around the 1760s

On his four journeys to England, Fürst Franz of Anhalt-Dessau and his entourage had visited, among other landskips, Stourhead, Stowe, and Rousham, and derived much stimulus from them He was anything but a slavish imitator, and in any case his ‘starting material’ on a flat floodplain differed greatly from the terrain of his English models It is unclear whether the idea of a narrative frame at Wörlitz was prompted by the example of Stourhead, a garden which the Fürst admired greatly But Wörlitz displays a more developed variation on that particular theme The circuit (or ‘belt’) walk, familiar in Stourhead and (partly) Stowe, is here framed by the com-manding position of the ‘Warning Altar’ which greets the Wanderer at a midpoint in his peregrination, urging in words inscribed (in the German vernacular), alongside carvings of Apollo and the Muses, on a large sand-stone urn: ‘Wanderer, achte Natur und Kunst und schone ihrer Werke’ (‘Wanderer, heed nature and art and spare their works’),17 a theme which underlies the ‘meaning’ of the whole garden The Wanderer is urged to pur-sue the recommended itinerary for visiting what turns out to be a varied, but intricately connected series of gardens (four in total), some separated by water, that together form the Wörlitz landscape garden In so doing, he has

to criss-cross the various lakes on which these gardens are situated, by ing brief ferry-rides between them This ‘assisted’ form of transportation (in

tak-a ‘gondoltak-a’) in itself tak-adds to the impression of the Wtak-anderer’s movement tak-and purposeful activity It also provides a unique opportunity to create, as well as

17 ‘Probably the earliest monument to nature conservation and monument preservation in

Germany.’ Ludwig Trauzettel, ‘Schoch’s Garden’, in Kulturstiftung DessauWörlitz (ed.), Infinitely

Beautiful: The Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Realm (Berlin: Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung GmbH,

2005), 185.

to enjoy, the multiple, ever-changing perspectives with which this garden is

so richly endowed.18

At first sight, the broad lateral spread of the gardens in Wörlitz—the result

of the water-dominated site—would seem to work against the idea of coherence However, in their joint work for around 40 years on this long-lasting project Fürst Franz and von Erdmannsdorff had a persistent knack of turning disadvantage into advantage and usefulness into beauty To counteract the extreme danger of flooding, for example—and several major and destructive inundations were recorded in the 18th century—they devel-oped the original dykes (laid down by Dutch engineers in the 17th century) into ornamental as well as practical aids, building on them a series of watch-towers which were not only attractive, varied buildings in themselves, but in many cases provided elevated standpoints from which important axial views

or ‘sight lines’ could be developed, all of which have the effect of linking up disparate and widely spaced sections of the domain and highlighting its carefully positioned, significant buildings or ornamental features.19 Axial perspectives had been employed in garden layouts—albeit in a very different way—as far back as the Renaissance and, subsequently, the formal gardens

of the 16th and 17th centuries.20 They feature prominently in English gardens contemporaneous to Wörlitz, for example Stowe (considerably), Stourhead, and Rousham (in greater moderation) The case of Wörlitz is more remark-able for the sheer number of examples, and for their being more clearly integrated into the progress and experience of the imaginary Wanderer, on

18 Two of the ‘gardens’ making up the Wörlitz garden are named after their respective gardeners: Schoch’s garden (complete with his grave and inscription) and Neumark’s garden; the others are Schloßgarten and the Neue Anlagen.

19 In the Wörlitz garden alone, there are today over 30 such viewpoints, but formerly they extended over the entire ‘Garden-Kingdom’, including open farmland, to link up with the other four main landscape gardens, including two smaller Rococo and Baroque properties which had been occupied by the Fürst’s family and ancestors A total of 109 such views have been identified, many of which have fallen into neglect Some of the latter are currently the subject of the ongoing programme of restoration being carried out by the Kulturstiftung

DessauWörlitz See Das Dessau-Wörlitzer Gartenreich: Inventarisation und Entwicklungs potentiale

der historischen Infrastruktur (Dessau: Kulturstiftung DessauWörlitz, 2000).

20 There is a very significant difference between the approach applied towards axial perspectives

by the 18th-century landscapers and that of their predecessors For one thing the latter had

confined these prospects (termed ‘goose-feet’, Gänsefüsse, or pattes d’oie) to the paths on which

the viewer was placed, producing very limited, often stiff and mathematical effects It was a liberating move when such ‘sight lines’ could be removed and located within strategic plant- ings and natural features, at the same time being assisted by numerous positions, or ‘vantage points’ The landscape movement had thus developed considerably the application of perspec- tive, thereby opening up a whole new world of vistas and connections.