Music of the Future

"Music of the Future" ("German: Zukunftsmusik") is the title of an essay by Richard Wagner, first published in French translation in 1860 as "La musique de l'avenir" and published in the original German in 1861. It was intended to introduce the librettos of Wagner's operas to a French audience at the time when he was hoping to launch in Paris a production of Tannhäuser, and sets out a number of his desiderata for true opera, including the need for 'endless melody'. Wagner deliberately put the title in quotation marks to distance himself from the term; Zukunftsmusik had already been adopted, both by Wagner's enemies, in the 1850s, often as a deliberate misunderstanding of the ideas set out in Wagner's 1849 essay, The Artwork of the Future, and by his supporters, notably Franz Liszt. Wagner's essay seeks to explain why the term is inadequate, or inappropriate, for his approach.

The earliest public use of the pejorative German term Zukunftsmusik seems to date from 1853, when the music teacher and essayist Friedrich Wieck, Clara Schumann's father, used in it three new chapters (written 1852) for his collection of essays Clavier und Gesang. Wieck referred to Wagner, Franz Liszt and their followers. In 1854 a Viennese critic, L. A. Zellner, used it in respect of the music of both Wagner and Robert Schumann; it was also used that year by the composer Louis Spohr. It began to be used in a specifically pejorative sense against Wagner by the editor Ludwig Bischoff, an associate of the conservative Ferdinand Hiller. The term "Musique de l'avenir" was also used in France as an anti-Wagnerian slogan. This is demonstrated by some French caricatures of 1860 and 1861. They appeared in connection with Wagner's concerts on January 25, February 1 and February 8, 1860, at the Parisian Théâtre Italien and performances of his Tannhäuser in March 1861 in Paris, which ended in a debacle. In one of these caricatures an orchestra in front of a stage can be seen. The singers on the stage are two crying babies. The caption explains that the conductor Alphonse Royer had recruited "artistes de l'avenir" ("artists of the future") at an orphanage for a performance of Tannhäuser. In another caricature a conductor asks one of his musicians, to play his part, to which the musician replies (as it is "musique de l'avenir"), he will play it next week. "Musique de l'avenir" thus carried a meaning of musical nonsense.

By Wagner's supporters the word "Zukunftsmusik" was used in a larger, and more positive, scope. Typically, this term was used in connection with the aesthetic aims of the circle of artists around Franz Liszt in Weimar, among them Joachim Raff, Hans von Bülow, Peter Cornelius, Rudolph Viole, Felix Draeseke, Alexander Ritter and others. They regarded themselves as "Zukunftsmusiker" ("musicians of the future") with meaning of progressive artists. Since they were well known as propagandists in favour of Wagner's works, Wagner's style was considered as part of "Zukunftsmusik".

Much to Wagner's anger, however, Liszt did not concentrate solely on Wagner's works at Weimar. He also performed works by other contemporary composers, among them Robert Schumann, Ferdinand Hiller, Hector Berlioz, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Anton Rubinstein, Eduard Sobolewski and Giuseppe Verdi. The activities of the circle around Liszt were termed in France as "École anarchique" ("Anarchic School") or "École de Weimar" ("Weimarian School"). Occasionally, Schumann was regarded as a representative of that school, and there are even examples where Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was called its originator.

Schumann himself would not have liked to be taken as representative of Wagner's or Liszt's kind of "Zukunftsmusik". In a letter to Joseph Joachim of October 7, 1853, he referred to Liszt as "Judas Iscariot, who might quite well keep preaching at the Ilm"; and in a letter of February 6, 1854, to Richard Pohl, he wrote:

Those who in your view are "Zukunftsmusiker", in my view are "Gegenwartsmusiker"("musicians of the present"); and those who in your view are "Vergangenheitsmusiker" ("musicians of the past") (Bach, Handel, Beethoven), for me they seem to be the best "Zukunftsmusiker" ("musicians of (or for) the future"). I shall never be able to consider spiritual beauty in beautiful forms as an outmoded point of view. Does perhaps Wagner have them? And, after all, where are Liszt's ingenious achievements – where are they on display? Perhaps in his desk? does he perhaps want to wait for the future, since he fears he cannot be understood? right now?

Pohl was a member of Liszt's intimate circle at Weimar. Liszt therefore might have heard of Schumann's opinion, but despite this he shortly afterwards published his Piano Sonata in B Minor with a dedication to Schumann.

Liszt admired Wagner as composer of genius, but he did not share Wagner's ideas on the "Music of the Future". Liszt's leading idea was to unite poetry and music in works of instrumental music, in symphonic poems and other symphonic works with a "program", subjects of non-musical nature; quite the opposite of Wagner's ideal to unite all the arts in staged music drama. In some of Liszt's essays, for example in that about Berlioz and Harold in Italy, he opposed some of Wagner's views. Wagner meanwhile had given lukewarm support to Liszt's ideas in his 1857 essay "On Franz Liszt's Symphonic Poems, ".