Richard Wagner.

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Richard Wagner.
I

INTRODUCTION

Richard Wagner (1813-1883), German composer, conductor, and essayist, one of the most influential cultural figures of the 19th century. Through his creative work and
his theoretical writings, Wagner revolutionized the concept and structure of opera.

II

LIFE

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig. His father died soon after his birth, and in 1814 the family moved to Dresden. In 1822 Wagner entered Dresden's
Kreuzschule. Here he became fascinated with ancient Greece and translated 12 books of the Odyssey by Homer, attempted to write an epic poem, and began a lurid
five-act tragedy entitled Leubald. In 1828 he enrolled at the Nicolaischule in Leipzig, where he began lessons in harmony with conductor Christian Gottlieb Müller. Over
the next three years he composed several piano sonatas, overtures, and seven songs to texts from Faust (1808), a drama by German poet and playwright Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe. In 1831 Wagner entered Leipzig University to study music and began lessons in counterpoint (the combination of independent melodies) with
organist Christian Theodor Weinlig, under whom he also composed sonatas, overtures, and a symphony. These early instrumental works were influenced heavily by the
music of German composer Ludwig van Beethoven.

A

Early Operas and First Musical Appointments

Wagner's first attempt at opera composition was a projected three-act work entitled Die Hochzeit (The Wedding). He began the music in late 1832, but abandoned it
when his sister Rosalie expressed distaste for the libretto (poetic text). Wagner retained some of the characters' names in his first completed opera, Die Feen (The
Fairies), a work he finished in early 1834 while chorus master at the city theater of Würzburg. In 1834 he was appointed music director of a traveling theater company
based in Magdeburg, where in 1836 he conducted an unsuccessful performance of his new opera, Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love). Later that year Wagner followed
actress Minna Planer to Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia). They were married in November, and several months later Wagner was appointed music director of
Königsberg's theater.
In 1837 Wagner began a similar appointment in R?ga (in what is now Latvia), and started composing a new opera based on Rienzi, the Last of the Roman Tribunes
(1835) by English novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton. In 1839 he and Minna fled R?ga to escape creditors; this entailed a rough sea voyage along the Norwegian coast.
Wagner later claimed that this journey influenced the distinctive coloring of his next opera, Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman), which is set in Norway;
however, the fact that the opera was originally set in Scotland casts suspicion upon this claim. In September 1839 the Wagners arrived in Paris, France, where Wagner
completed Rienzi (1840) and composed Der fliegende Holländer (1841). He also narrowly avoided debtors' prison.

B

Royal Kapellmeister and Political Activist

In 1842 the Wagners left Paris for Dresden, where the overwhelming success of the premiere of Rienzi established Wagner's reputation as an opera composer. Wagner
himself conducted the premiere of Holländer in January 1843, and a month later he was appointed Kapellmeister (a conducting post) at the Royal Court Theater in
Dresden. During the next years he composed Tannhäuser (1845) and Lohengrin (1848) and waged a relentless campaign against the musical and political establishment
of the Dresden court. Wagner's participation in revolutionary activities, his authorship of articles celebrating revolution and anarchy, and his involvement with Russian
anarchist Mikhail Bakunin finally led to a warrant for his arrest. With the help of Hungarian composer and pianist Franz Liszt, whom Wagner had met eight years earlier
in Paris, the Wagners fled to Switzerland and eventually settled in Zürich.

C

Years of Exile

In 1850 Liszt conducted the premiere of Lohengrin in Weimar, Germany. Wagner could not attend, however; he had been banned from the country for his political
activities. Between 1849 and 1853 Wagner wrote little music but a great deal of argumentative prose, including "Die Kunst und Die Revolution" (1849, "Art and
Revolution"), "Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft" (1849, "The Artwork of the Future"), Oper und Drama (1850-1851, "Opera and Drama"), and the anti-Semitic essay "Das
Judentum in der Musik" (1850, "Judaism in Music"). He also completed the libretto for his massive four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung),
comprising Das Rheingold (1854), Die Walküre (1856), Siegfried (1871), and Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods, 1874) (see Nibelungenlied). Between 1853
and 1857 Wagner composed the music for the first two Ring operas, which he called music dramas. Wagner also completed the first two acts of Siegfried before
breaking off work on the Ring to compose Tristan und Isolde (1859).
In late 1859 the Wagners returned to Paris, where the following year rehearsals began for a revised Tannhäuser at the Opéra; however, the production failed due to
political protests. On the bright side, Wagner was granted partial amnesty in 1860, and two years later the last restrictions were lifted, leaving him free to reenter
Germany.

D

A Royal Patron

By 1862 Wagner's marriage, which had been under considerable strain for some time, broke down completely and the couple separated. (Minna died four years later.)
Wagner spent the next two years conducting performances of his own music, but mounting debts brought him to the brink of arrest. However, help was at hand: In
May 1864 he was summoned to Munich by the 18-year-old King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who settled Wagner's debts, paid him a generous allowance, and provided him
with housing. Wagner was soon joined in his new home by Cosima von Bülow, Liszt's daughter and the wife of German conductor and pianist Hans von Bülow. Wagner
and Cosima began a relationship that produced three children before the dissolution of the Bülows' marriage in 1870. Mounting hostility toward Wagner by members of
Ludwig's court resulted in Wagner's banishment from Munich in December 1865, six months after the premiere of Tristan. He moved into a house called Tribschen on
the Lake of Lucerne (Vierwaldstätter See) in Switzerland, where Cosima joined him in late 1868; they married in 1870.
In 1867 Wagner completed his great comic opera Die Meistersinger, which received a triumphant premiere the following year in Munich under Bülow. In March 1869
Wagner resumed work on the Ring; the first two Ring operas had already premiered in Munich, over Wagner's strenuous objections. Convinced that the Ring could
never be adequately performed in existing opera houses, Wagner decided to build a new theater in the Bavarian town of Bayreuth specially for this purpose.

E

The Master of Bayreuth

In May 1872 Wagner laid the foundation stone for the Bayreuth Festspielhaus (festival theater). Two years later he and Cosima moved into Haus Wahnfried, a new
home paid for by King Ludwig. Wagner completed Götterdämmerung in 1874, and rehearsals began in 1876 for the first Bayreuth festival (with three Ring cycles),

which took place in August 1876.
Wagner completed his final opera, Parsifal (which he called a 'festival drama of dedication' for the Festspielhaus), in 1882, and it premiered that July. In September
Wagner moved to Venice, where in February 1883, after a heated argument with Cosima, he suffered a fatal heart attack. He was buried in Bayreuth.

III

MUSIC AND THOUGHT

In the early 19th century, an opera was structured as a succession of conventional self-contained forms such as aria (a vocal solo), duet, or chorus, and these individual
'numbers' were connected by dialogue, either sung (recitative) or spoken. Wagner would change all of this.

A

Early Operas (1833-1840)

Each of Wagner's first three completed operas (now seldom performed) follows a different stylistic principle. Die Feen, with its succession of individual numbers, is a
German romantic opera of the sort composed by Carl Maria von Weber, Heinrich Marschner, and Beethoven. Its dramatic themes of redemption, forbidden questions,
and love between a mortal and a supernatural being recur in Wagner's later works. Das Liebesverbot, especially in its vibrant melodic lines, betrays the influence of the
fashionable Italian and French repertoire--operas by Gioacchino Rossini and Ferdinand Hérold, for example--that Wagner conducted at Würzburg and Magdeburg. The
story glorifies freedom in love, a concept that would resurface in Tannhäuser. Rienzi is a historically based five-act grand opera, in which Wagner attempted to outdo
such composers as Gasparo Spontini and Giacomo Meyerbeer. Although Rienzi is filled with the marches, processions, and ballets characteristic of grand opera, it begins
to break down the barrier between recitative and aria. In this opera Wagner also associated recurring orchestral motifs (short musical themes) with aspects of the
drama; such motifs would become increasingly important in his later works. Rienzi's monumental length and scope, although typical of grand opera, forecast the huge
scale of Wagner's later music dramas.

B

Romantic Operas (1840-1848)

Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote his own libretti. For his first three operas, Wagner largely employed unrhymed verse, but beginning with Der fliegende
Holländer he used end rhyme (poetic lines whose final words rhyme). Wagner later claimed that Holländer began his career as a poet.
Structurally, Holländer stands somewhere between Wagner's earlier "number" operas and the later music dramas, which were composed as unified entities, or throughcomposed (German durchkomponiert). It is sometimes referred to as a 'scene opera' because in it Wagner joined separate numbers into musically continuous scenes
(for example, the "aria, duet, and trio" that concludes Act II). The contrast between the spirit realm and the world of everyday reality (already noted in Die Feen) is
made clear through the use of different musical styles. In phrase lengths and melodic lines, the music associated with the supernatural is much less regular and
symmetrical than the music that depicts the real world.
In Tannhäuser, individual numbers are not designated at all, and much more music is written as recitative; however, strong traces of number opera remain. Wagner
again contrasts the real world with the supernatural: Music for the historical location, Wartburg, is rather conservative in its diatonicism (use only of tones belonging to
the basic seven-note musical scale or key) and in its symmetrical phrasing. Music for the realm of Venus is more advanced in its chromaticism (use of tones foreign to
the seven-note scale) and irregular phrasing. Furthermore, Wagner associates specific musical keys with aspects of the drama: The key of E-flat major is linked with the
concept of holy love and salvation, while E major is associated with sensual love and debauchery.
Lohengrin continues the trend toward through-composed scenes, although the listener can still identify arias, duets, and choruses. Individual characters are now
associated with specific instruments as well as keys: Lohengrin, a knight of the Holy Grail, is linked with high strings and the key of A major; the evil sorceress Ortrud,
with low strings and winds and the key of F-sharp minor; the heroine, Elsa, with high woodwinds and various flat keys; and King Henry, with brass instruments and the
key of C major. As in Holländer and Tannhäuser, various musical motifs linked with aspects of the drama tend to recur at appropriate moments.

C

Music Dramas (1848-1882)

After Rienzi, Wagner based his operas almost exclusively upon mythological subjects. He felt that myths expressed certain eternal truths about the human condition,
and that an opera based upon myth could therefore speak directly to human emotions. His monumental cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen is based upon German and
Scandinavian myth and features gods, giants, dwarfs, and human heroes. For the libretto, Wagner abandoned the end rhyme of his romantic operas in favor of
Stabreim, a type of ancient alliterative poetry that relies on the repetition of consonants and vowels. As a result of this freer poetry, the symmetrical musical phrases of
the romantic operas were replaced by an irregular, asymmetrical phraseology that some scholars call musical prose.
The main dramatic theme of the Ring is the conflict between love and power, the latter represented by the ring of world domination. Another favorite Wagnerian theme
is that of redemption (German Erlösung) which for Wagner meant release from an unbearable yet seemingly endless existence. This theme ties in with the notion that
one can die physically yet achieve spiritual salvation. Gods, mortals, and the world itself are destroyed at the end of the Ring, yet all are released from the curse of the
ring and thus escape damnation.
In the Ring, Wagner carried the principle of associative tonality to unprecedented lengths. Every major and minor key is associated with an aspect of the drama, and by
modulating (changing from one key to another), Wagner expressed in musical terms the changing dramatic situation. In addition, Wagner associated individual musical
themes with specific characters, concepts, and emotions. Such an associative theme is usually called a leitmotiv (German for 'leading motive'). For example, whenever a
character uses or even mentions the magic sword, the orchestra plays the sword theme; when two people fall in love, listeners hear the love theme.
Structurally the Ring continues the trend toward through-composition. Das Rheingold contains four scenes that are performed without pause. Each scene is made up of
several dramatic-musical episodes that some scholars call periods; each period displays consistency of key, musical theme, and dramatic event. In Die Walküre and the
first two acts of Siegfried, each scene is composed as a unified entity. Wagner treats Act III of Siegfried and each act of Götterdämmerung as a multimovement
symphony with voices.
Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger, and Parsifal continue the structural principles and some of the dramatic themes that Wagner developed while composing the Ring.
However, the system of associative keys is applied much less rigorously than in the Ring, and it is often difficult to ascribe precise meanings to the leitmotifs. Influenced
by German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, Wagner incorporated into these works the notion of renunciation (of life, of love, of worldly pleasures).The libretti display
a mixture of Stabreim and end rhyme.

D

Writings

Wagner's critical writings are enormous in volume and scope. Many are devoted to the question of how to reform both opera and society. Opera and Drama, for
example, sets forth some of the poetic and musical principles that Wagner was to develop in the Ring. Other essays treat subjects as diverse as the effect of climate

upon artistic creation and the horrors of vivisection. Wagner's anti-Semitism found vent in Judaism in Music and other essays. Taking into account Wagner's
autobiographical works and his thousands of letters, it seems possible that the composer may have written as many words as musical notes.

IV

LEGACY

Wagner's influence on the development of music was profound. In fact, the history of early 20th-century music could be written in terms of composers who extended
his principles, including Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schoenberg of Austria, and composers who reacted against Wagner's ideas, including Claude Debussy of France and
Igor Stravinsky of Russia. Through-composed operas laden with leitmotifs became prevalent, whether written by German composers such as Richard Strauss or Italian
composers such as Giacomo Puccini. To their instrumental music, Mahler and Schoenberg applied Wagner's methods of chromatic harmony and frequent modulation. In
retrospect, the chromatic extravagance and harmonic ruptures of Götterdämmerung can be heard as portents of the collapse in the first two decades of the 20th
century of the Western system of tonality based on major and minor keys. The twilight of the gods foretold also the twilight of tonal music.

Contributed By:
Warren Darcy
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