Richard Wagner (jan 1, 1813 – jan 1, 1883)

Description:

a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas.

Introduction
1. Few artists have had the impact across a diversity of fields that Wagner had.
2. In addition to a powerful musical imagination and impressive technique, he wrote prolifically about his views, which aids a study of the composer.

Art and Revolution: Wagner’s Early Career
1. Wagner’s musical career had a slower start than most of the others we have studied.
2. His third opera, Rienzi, was the most successful of the early works.
a. It is similar to French grand opera.
b. While in Paris he became familiar with Berlioz’s music.
3. Soon after the premiere, Wagner was offered a prestigious job as Royal Court Kapellmeister, which enabled him to supervise production of his next opera: Der fliegende Holländer.
4. With the Dresden Uprising (1849), Wagner had to leave the city. He had been drawn
into revolutionary politics. He wouldn’t return to Germany for almost fifteen years.
5. Two more grand Romantic operas followed: Tannhäuser and Lohengrin.
6. Dutchman dealt with a phantom sea captain, but Tannhäuser was based on a historical
person from the Middle Ages (see Chapter 2).
a. In the “Rome monologue” in the final act, Wagner introduces what he later calls unendliche Melodie, a seamless stream in which every note is thematic and meaningful.
7. In a manner similar to unendliche Melodie, the prelude of Lohengrin does not consist
of contrasting sections but works toward complete formal unity.

The Artwork of the Future, Modeled on the Imagined Past
1. Wagner was the first composer to write his own librettos.
2. No Wagner opera premiered between 1850 and 1865.
3. Wagner developed an idea that the ancient Greeks had united the arts, but that these
had subsequently split into different areas. He saw a reunification of them in Gesamtkunstwerk.

From Theory into Practice: The Ring of the Nibelung
1. The result of the time spent theorizing was the largest musical entity in the Western literate tradition: The Ring of the Nibelung.
a. It took Wagner twenty-five years to write.
b. It takes about fifteen hours to perform.
2. Wagner ties together the story of the German folk hero Siegfried with the history of the gods.
3. After beginning with Siegfried’s story, Wagner realized he needed to begin the story earlier: a preexisting musical reality that connected everything.
4. Wagner wrote the “poems” to the operas before composing

Wagnerian Leitmotifs
1. The preferred genre for these works is “music drama,” not “opera.”
2. Wagner created ways to unite the music and ideas over a period of several days.
3. He did not write the usual “numbers” but let the action continually evolve.
4. He used leitmotifs (which can be very small) to signal more than the words were telling the audience.
5. The motifs can signify many things, including characters, places, objects, emotions,
and even abstractions such as “fate.”
6. They can appear in the orchestra or vocal parts.
7. Oftentimes leitmotifs sound similar; this is a way to impart the web of interrelations that Wagner presents.

Words, Orchestra, and Theater
1. Wagner struggled with verse structure for the poetry. He was not satisfied with modern
verse structure and decided to invent a speech-melody of his own.
2. He based his poetry on the idea of Stabreim, an old bardic system of rhyming with
letters.
3. The use of the poetry and leitmotifs contribute to the “sea of harmony” that he created, swathing the audience in as many aural arenas as possible.
4. The harmony wanders through a broad spectrum of tonal centers, rarely stopping by
avoiding authentic cadences.
5. His works demanded new instruments in the orchestra and extraordinary staying power
from the singers.
6. Wagner also wanted a new theater structure for them, which was made possible when
King Ludwig II came to the throne in the mid1870s. The result was Bayreuth.



KEY TERMS:

Gesamtkunstwerk: a work of art that makes use of all or many art forms or strives to do so. The term is a German loanword which has come to be accepted in English as a core term in aesthetics.

Leitmotif: a recurrent theme throughout a musical or literary composition, associated with a particular person, idea, or situation.

Stabreim: literally "alliterative verse;" Alliteration is found in all the oldest surviving forms of Germanic verse, from the Old English Beowulf to the Old High German Hildebrandslied and the Old Norse Poetic Edda. Each line of verse is made up of two half-lines, each of which consists of two – sometimes three – semantically important, stressed syllables (Hebungen or ‘lifts’), with a variable number of weakly stressed syllables (Senkungen or ‘dips’) dividing them. The lines are linked together alliteratively: the main stress or ‘stave’ is located on the first lift of each second half-line, while the two lifts in the preceding half-line are treated as supporting staves, one or both of which must alliterate with the main stave.

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