Wagner and "Les deux grenadiers" by Heine

 

Marshal Ney Supporting the Rear Guard During the Retreat from Moscow - A. Yvon

 

Wagner was a Lieder composer in his youth, he wrote, for instance, the Seven Pieces for Goethe's Faust or Der Tannenbaum. A few years later, during his first stay in Paris (1839-1842), Wagner composed a handful of songs in French, among which one excels, perhaps the best Wagner's Lieder, apart from, of course, the Wesendonck-Lieder.

By those years, Wagner met one of the greatest glories ever of German literature, the poet Heinrich Heine. Heine's influence was crucial on the first really Wagnerian operas, The Flying Dutchman and Tannhäuser. Heine is also the author of the text that Wagner was going to musicalize, we are referring to Die Grenadiere (The grenadiers), that is included in the wonderful compilation of poems entitled Buch der Lieder (Book of Songs) which, as Art Song lovers know, became really important to Robert Schumann.

Wagner did not compose his song upon Heine's German original, but upon a French translation by François-Adolphe Loeve. Heine and Wagner tell us the story of two grenadiers of Napoleon's troops that go back home after years of being prisoners in Russia. When they arrive in Germany they learn the news, Napoleon has been defeated. Each one of their different reactions offer a very dramatic poem, very well developed by Wagner.

 

Les deux grenadiers 

 

 

Wagner begins his composition with a heavy tune; the grenadiers have been walking for a long time. They hear the news soon; Napoleon has been defeated and has been taken prisoner. The piano accompaniment is dramatic; it shows the chills that the grenadiers feel when they learn the news. For some measures, the voice keeps quiet and the piano tremolos describes their feelings, with a transition to a peaceful andante when they talk. Suddenly the music changes, the outcry "Femmes, enfants, que m'importe!" ("What matters son? What matters wife?") expresses that awkward moment, and it softens when the grenadier feels the proximity of death and asks his friend to take his body to France. The music changes again, with a march rhythm that begins when he asks his friend to put the Honour Cross on his chest. The warlike character of the end of the song starts. Gradually it intensifies, until the call from the eternal night arrives. Here Wagner turns to La Marseillaise, under its melody the grenadier will leave his grave to defend Napoleon.

The Lied’s skill is that Wagner takes it to his own ground, theatre, and achieves a direct work that catches the listener's interest since the beginning. He didn't catch, though, the Parisians' interest. They still felt recent the 1830 Revolution with those final bars of La Marseillaise.

Some months later, in 1840, Robert Schumann set to music the original German Heine's poem and also decided to finish with La Marseillaise. When Wagner knew it, he wrote to him these ironic lines: "I’ve heard that you composed Heine's Grenadiers, and used the Marseillaise at the end. Last winter I wrote it too and I also ended with La Marseillaise! This must mean something! I wrote my grenadiers from a French translation that I read to Heine to which he was satisfied. It has been sung here and there and I was awarded the Legion of Honour; besides, I was granted an annual pension of twenty thousand francs in charge of Louis Philippe’s private safe." We all know that Wagner left Paris without any money nor any artistic success. Wagner forgot the world of Lied, the opera took its place.