Wagner, Bootlicker

Biographers who have pictured Composer Richard Wagner as a bit of a blackguard, a touch of a toady, had some added evidence last week. Musical Courier printed some early Wagnerian letters, extracted from a Swiss musical journal by Robert Hernried, Viennese refugee and music professor at St. Ambrose College, Davenport, Iowa.

In his later years, Wagner was one of Germany's prime anti-Semites. He wrote Das Judenthum in der Musik (Judaism in Music), in Oper und Drama attacked a Jewish composer--Giacomo Meyerbeer (born Jakob Beer, of a Berlin banking family). But in the 18405, his letters now reveal, Wagner licked Jewish boots and liked it. Meyerbeer, whose brassy, spectacular operas influenced Wagner's early work, was a power not only in Berlin but in Paris, whose musical tastes he formed.

Wagner begged Meyerbeer's help in getting hearings for his Flying Dutchman, Rienzi, Tannhduser. Typical Wagner letter to Meyerbeer (who came across with the help):

"I will follow you with stammered thanks from aeon to aeon until, irked by having no peace even in the hereafter, you will consign me to Hell! Then you will no longer hear me, but I can assure you that I will continue to stammer my thanks even there. Until that moving catastrophe will have occurred, I will once more presume on your kindness. . . . Your servant, eternally devoted to you with heart and blood."

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