As to the composition of the music, I have heard so much from Wagner on this particular opera, to convince me that, though it occupied but a few weeks, it was not done without much careful thought. The scaffolding upon which it was constructed is very clear. Indeed, the “make” of the whole work is most transparent. There are three chief subjects. (1) Senta’s song, (2) Sailor’s and (3) Spinning chorus, and those have been woven into an organic whole by thoughtful work.
In the summer of 1866, I was sitting with Wagner at dinner in his house at Munich. It chanced that the conversation turned upon the weary mariner, his yearning for land and love, and Wagner’s own longing for his fatherland at the time he composed the “Dutchman,” when going to a piano that stood near him, he said, “The pent-up anguish, the homesickness that then held complete possession of me, were poured out in this phrase,”--playing the short cadence of two bars thrice repeated that preludes Vanderdecken’s recital to Daland of his woeful wanderings. “At the end of the phrase, on the diminished seventh, in my mind I paused and brooded over the past, the repetitions, each higher, interpreting the increased intensity of my sufferings,” and, Wagner went on, that with each note he originally intended that Vanderdecken should move but one step, and move only in time with the music. Now this careful premeditated tonal working in the young man of twenty-eight is indicative, as much as any portion of Wagner is, of his _style_, a word of pregnant meaning when used in relation to Wagner’s works.
The “Dutchman” was written at Mendon, a village about five miles from Paris. It was composed at the piano. This incident is of importance, since for several months he had not written a note, and knew not whether he still possessed the power of composing. He had left Paris because of the noise and bustle, and to his horror discovered that his new landlord was a collector of musical instruments, so there was little likelihood of securing the quietude he so much desired. When the work was finished, conscious that realistic France was not the place where he could produce his poetic ideal, he despatched it to Meyerbeer, then in Germany, whose aid he solicited in getting it performed. Replies were not encouraging. Meanwhile, sorely harassed how to provide life’s necessities, he sold, under pressure, his manuscript of the poem for £20.