Richard Wagner

(1813-1883)

Biography:

á          He grew up in theater, started writing operas at age 20

á          His early operas based on received models from various parts of Europe:

á          Die Feen (The Fairies; 1833-4; first performance 1888) based on models of Weber and earlier German Romantic Operas

á          Das Liebesverbot (Ban on Love; 1836) based on Italian models: lyrical, composite finales; but also has German elements and his first use of Leitmotive

á          Rienzi (1842) is based on French Grand Opera: monumental historical drama; extravagant

á          His next three operas, Der fliegende Hollander (1843), Tannhauser (1845) and Lohengrin (1848) return to German Romantic ideals.  These are a mixture of traditional elements (from all three traditions, e.g. recits/arias, crowd scenes, etc.) and newer ideas (scene complexes to escape number opera, German traditional [ballad] song)

á          These operas look ahead to what Wagner hoped to accomplish later on and techniques he would use to accomplish it:

á          Polarity of ideas in the stories reinforced by polarity of musical ideas

á          Ideas of conventional characters conveyed in symmetrical phrases; by contrast, an unconventional character such as Venus (Òsymbolizing liberation from bourgeois sexual hypocrisyÓ) is much freer in conception.

á          1848 was a turning point for Wagner; he was on the losing side of a Revolution in Germany, had to leave country. While in exile in Switzerland, he worked on his ideas of what opera should be.  In addition to large-scale social revolution, Wagner started an opera revolution. 

á          His essays in Switzerland call for reforms in opera:

á          Die Kunst und die Revolution (Art and Revolution) Calls for taking art out of the realm of Capitalist speculation and profit-making (Communist Manifesto had just been written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels 1848)

á          Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft (Artwork of the Future): restore the integrity of classical Greek drama by reuniting all media: the Gesamtkunstwerk. Music could become the means for the fullest realization of the drama

á          Oper und Drama advances theories for relationship of music to text: musical line should reflect all nuances of text.  Clear declamation was paramount, so new text was needed; he used alliteration

á          More of his ideals:

á          Opera should occupy same lofty position as symphonic music of Beethoven

á          It should explore loftiest human issues. (This could be realized by using Mythology: larger than life kinds of characters)

á          Late Operas (Music Dramas) put these ideas to work

á          Operas of the late period:

á          Ring Cycle Ring of the Niebelung (worked on for 20 yrs, completed 1874): Das Reingold, Die WalkŸre, Siegfried, GštterdŠmmerung

á          Tristan und Isolde (1859, 1st perf 1865)

á          Die Meistersinger (1865, 1st perf 1868)

á          Parsifal (1882)

á          Leitmotives: a technique he used to unify music and drama: musical identification of a character, place, force (Destiny, Fate) 

á          He often made Leitmotives modulate; helped with Òendless melody;Ó Wagner wanted music to be very continuous, one way was to avoid cadences through deceptive cad. or modulation.

á          He used elaborate tonal structures to unify scenes, e.g. Act III (finale) of Die WalkŸre: large scale V-I progression.

á          Unification of speech and song: example of Alliteration from beginning of Das Rheingold. An additional benefit of alliteration: frees text (and therefore music) from metric accent that are usually associated with rhyming verse