Scan 4
Musical Courier 1906-09-26: Vol 53 Iss 1383, 1906
24 lines. Read by computer on 23 September 2026. Printed page 5. See the scan on archive.org.
1Zurich—Tracking Wagner Legends.
3ZURICH and ST. GALL, Switzerland, August, 1906.
5AGNER wrote at one time to his friend Fischer in Dresden from Zürich: "I have no words to express the charm of my stay here; in Paris I was quite homesick for Switzerland." That can easily be accounted for by the fact that in Paris there was a gigantic struggle, whereas (for the truth must be told) here Wagner had an Arcadian existence, living, after his first years in the Escher row, in the little Asyl, as the building was called, half way down the hill from the Wesendonck mansion or villa, at the expense of the late Mr. Wesendonck. My purport in coming here was by no means to search for Wagneriana, but in the intervals between the various phases of my purely personal business in Zürich, I determined to see, to inquire, and to learn from living sources at first hand, who were existing in the Wagner days of Zürich, what this Aufenthalt here really was, and and how much legend was twisted and coiled into the truth, and if there was any, to do my best to separate it and let the two stand in juxtaposition.
7What I am going to say here is not through vicarious conveyance, but is direct testimony and living evidence.
9The Escher houses are a row of old style apartment houses on the Zeltweg, which is narrow, the buildings running through to a wide cobble paved open court faced by other but smaller houses. On the first floor of this house No. 13, there lived Mr. and Mrs. Richard Wagner, the latter née Minna Planer, and they lived in a quiet manner, he jovial and industrious, now and then entertaining friends soon made, and receiving visitors from Germany who had known him there.
11Next door to Wagner lived Heim, the music director of the Zürich male chorus, who became a Wagner enthusiast very early, and his wife, an amateur singer who only later on could be called a convert. At a rehearsal, so-called, of the first act of the "Walküre," Liszt, who was here on a visit, presided at the piano, Frau Heim sang Sieglinde and Wagner sang Wotan, Hunding, Siegmund, etc., in what he called a "composer's voice." Frau Heim complained that her voice was not high enough and Wagner replied: "The singing is not so significant; we made it dramatic and that is what I want." Naturally, he meant this largely as a compliment to the young singer. Escher, who built the houses, was the father of the celebrated Escher who conceived the St. Gotthard tunnel and succeeded in interesting Bismarck in it. A monument to Escher stands in front of the railroad station here.
13He became acquainted with Wagner and interested himself for local music because of this personal acquaintance. Heim, the music director, died in 1880; his widow, who must by this time have passed seventy-five, is still living in Zürich, or was, at least, according to latest accounts.
15Zurich and Wagner.
17Zürich is a modern European center of commerce—which also means railways—and in that section which has developed the modern tone it is like all these flourishing European cities, handsome architecturally, and well preserved through a splendid municipal control. Attractively located on the Lake, the city has broadened out in landscape gardening and possesses amply decorated public buildings, of which the Opera House and the Tone Halle, the latter building used for concerts and recitals, are specimens, and specimens that ought to aid us in crushing out some of our American conceit, for these buildings—with beautiful surroundings—are not in a city with millions of inhabitants, but in a city that has not reached 175,000, although it is close to it now.
19It was the militant scholar, Zwingli, who made the renown of this place. The old Münster where he preached in 1520 or so and the house where he worked with such diligence and effect are over in the old, but most interesting, section of the hilly town. A modern monument in bronze is seen through a patch of foliage on the quai at the bottom of the hill on which the church stands. This church was said to have been chartered by Charlemagne, and high in one of its towers of poor modeling and uncalled for design is his huge seated figure in a niche, his head covered with a tremendous brass crown, his scepter held across his knees, and his severe face indicating command and a call for submission. Had Charley Magnus known that 750 years later the same church would upset doctrines upon which his very crown rested, he certainly would not have given the charter with the same unlimited privileges. But he did not know. The church, like all these bastard ecclesiastical buildings, is just one additional physical proof of the absence of art in these churchly people. Zwingli was a formidable scholastic. Lavater, who comes from here, was really a kind of predecessor to the less prominent talent Pestalozzi, but both are also scientific minds only, just as was that of the diplomat Bluntschli, who is counted as of Zürich.
21Musically the place is permanently fixed in history now through its association with Richard Wagner, although there is among the old Minnesingers one known quite favorably as Johannes Hadlaub, who here did some of the musical work of that period, as did Walther von der Vogelweide, and I did not remember him at all, I assure you; he is merely recorded in the Münster archives, and the good old soul probably does not even suspect it.
23One building strikes one as a classical model, and that is the
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