Richard Wagner (1 Jan 1813 Jahr – 1 Jan 1883 Jahr)

Beschreibung:

Nationality: German

Wagner began writing operas in 1830s, and in 1839-42 he and his wife soprano Minna Planer moved to Paris. He struggled to gain traction with his operas in France, so they returned to Germany where he had much better success. He supported the 1848-49 resurrection, and had to relocate to Switzerland when it failed. A couple of his vices include habitually gambling and numerous love affairs. He even channeled the passions of his affair with Mathilde Wensedonck (the wife of one of his patrons) into Tristan and Isolde.

Nationalism and Anti-Semitism
Set in opposition to Brahm's conservatism, Wagner was a musical and philosophical nationalist, claiming that German art was pure, spiritual, and profound, as opposed to the superficial appeal of Italian and French music. These views also bled into horrifying anti-Semitism, introducing the notion of ethnicity determining nationality (ie an ethnic Jew can never be a true German). He expressed these views because he sought to brutally establish his independence from the Jewish Meyerbeer and Mendelssohn, both of whom he admired in his early days and whom his own music was indebted to. Despite this, some of his greatest advocates have been Jewish musicians, including Hermann Levi, Gustav Mahler, and Daniel Barenboim.

Musical Influence
He influenced future composers with his emphasis on music being the servant of drama, use of leitmotifs as an organizing principle, and his creative manipulation of chromatic harmony. He was prone to giving the leading musical role to his large orchestra and extracting the vocal lines from the orchestral texture.

Wagner viewed opera as a Gesamtkunstwerk (total or collective artwork), a combination of all the different artistic contributions to an opera. He thus was very concerned with having a say about the whole production.

Zugefügt zum Band der Zeit:

Datum:

Abbildungen: