![RichardWagner](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/RichardWagner.jpg)
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director,
polemic
Polemic () is contentious rhetoric intended to support a specific position by forthright claims and to undermine the opposing position. The practice of such argumentation is called ''polemics'', which are seen in arguments on controversial topics ...
ist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the
libretto
A libretto (Italian for "booklet") is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or Musical theatre, musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the t ...
and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of
Carl Maria von Weber
Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber (18 or 19 November 17865 June 1826) was a German composer, conductor, virtuoso pianist, guitarist, and critic who was one of the first significant composers of the Romantic era. Best known for his opera ...
and
Giacomo Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer (born Jakob Liebmann Beer; 5 September 1791 – 2 May 1864) was a German opera composer, "the most frequently performed opera composer during the nineteenth century, linking Mozart and Wagner". With his 1831 opera ''Robert le di ...
, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the ''
Gesamtkunstwerk
A ''Gesamtkunstwerk'' (, literally 'total artwork', translated as 'total work of art', 'ideal work of art', 'universal artwork', 'synthesis of the arts', 'comprehensive artwork', or 'all-embracing art form') is a work of art that makes use of al ...
'' ("total work of art"), by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle ''
Der Ring des Nibelungen
(''The Ring of the Nibelung''), WWV 86, is a cycle of four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. The works are based loosely on characters from Germanic heroic legend, namely Norse legendary sagas and the '' Nibe ...
'' (''The Ring of the
Nibelung
The term Nibelung (German) or Niflungr (Old Norse) is a personal or clan name with several competing and contradictory uses in Germanic heroic legend. It has an unclear etymology, but is often connected to the root ''nebel'', meaning mist. The te ...
'').
His compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex
textures, rich
harmonies
In music, harmony is the process by which individual sounds are joined together or composed into whole units or compositions. Often, the term harmony refers to simultaneously occurring frequencies, pitches ( tones, notes), or chords. However ...
and
orchestration
Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra (or, more loosely, for any musical ensemble, such as a concert band) or of adapting music composed for another medium for an orchestra. Also called "instrumentation", orc ...
, and the elaborate use of
leitmotif
A leitmotif or leitmotiv () is a "short, recurring musical phrase" associated with a particular person, place, or idea. It is closely related to the musical concepts of ''idée fixe'' or ''motto-theme''. The spelling ''leitmotif'' is an anglici ...
s—musical phrases associated with individual characters, places, ideas, or plot elements. His advances in musical language, such as extreme
chromaticism
Chromaticism is a compositional technique interspersing the primary diatonic scale, diatonic pitch (music), pitches and chord (music), chords with other pitches of the chromatic scale. In simple terms, within each octave, diatonic music uses o ...
and quickly shifting
tonal centres, greatly influenced the development of classical music. His ''
Tristan und Isolde
''Tristan und Isolde'' (''Tristan and Isolde''), WWV 90, is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the 12th-century romance Tristan and Iseult by Gottfried von Strassburg. It was compose ...
'' is sometimes described as marking the start of
modern music.
Wagner had his own opera house built, the
Bayreuth Festspielhaus
The ''Bayreuth Festspielhaus'' or Bayreuth Festival Theatre (german: link=no, Bayreuther Festspielhaus, ) is an opera house north of Bayreuth, Germany, built by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner and dedicated solely to the performa ...
, which embodied many novel design features. The ''Ring'' and ''
Parsifal
''Parsifal'' ( WWV 111) is an opera or a music drama in three acts by the German composer Richard Wagner and his last composition. Wagner's own libretto for the work is loosely based on the 13th-century Middle High German epic poem ''Parzival'' ...
'' were premiered here and his
most important stage works continue to be performed at the annual
Bayreuth Festival
The Bayreuth Festival (german: link=no, Bayreuther Festspiele) is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner are presented. Wagner himself conceived ...
, run by his descendants. His thoughts on the relative contributions of music and drama in opera were to change again, and he reintroduced some traditional forms into his last few stage works, including ''
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
(; "The Master-Singers of Nuremberg"), WWV 96, is a music drama, or opera, in three acts, by Richard Wagner. It is the longest opera commonly performed, taking nearly four and a half hours, not counting two breaks between acts, and is traditio ...
'' (''The Mastersingers of Nuremberg'').
Until his final years, Wagner's life was characterised by political exile, turbulent love affairs, poverty and repeated flight from his creditors. His controversial writings on music, drama and politics have attracted extensive comment – particularly, since the late 20th century, where they express
antisemitic
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
sentiments. The effect of his ideas can be traced in many of the arts throughout the 20th century; his influence spread beyond composition into conducting, philosophy, literature, the visual arts and theatre.
Biography
Early years
![Wagnerbruhl](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Wagnerbruhl.jpg)
Richard Wagner was born to an
ethnic German family in
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...
, who lived at No 3, the
Brühl (''The House of the Red and White Lions'') in the
Jewish quarter on 22 May 1813. He was baptized at
St. Thomas Church. He was the ninth child of Carl Friedrich Wagner, who was a clerk in the Leipzig police service, and his wife, Johanna Rosine (née Paetz), the daughter of a baker. Wagner's father Carl died of
typhoid fever
Typhoid fever, also known as typhoid, is a disease caused by '' Salmonella'' serotype Typhi bacteria. Symptoms vary from mild to severe, and usually begin six to 30 days after exposure. Often there is a gradual onset of a high fever over several ...
six months after Richard's birth. Afterwards, his mother Johanna lived with Carl's friend, the actor and playwright
Ludwig Geyer
Ludwig Heinrich Christian Geyer (21 January 1779 – 30 September 1821) was a German actor, playwright, and painter.
Life and career
Born in Eisleben, he was the stepfather of composer Richard Wagner, whose biological father had died some six ...
. In August 1814 Johanna and Geyer probably married—although no documentation of this has been found in the Leipzig church registers. She and her family moved to Geyer's residence in
Dresden
Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label=Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth larg ...
. Until he was fourteen, Wagner was known as Wilhelm Richard Geyer. He almost certainly thought that Geyer was his biological father.
Geyer's love of the theatre came to be shared by his stepson, and Wagner took part in his performances. In his autobiography
''Mein Leben'' Wagner recalled once playing the part of an angel. In late 1820, Wagner was enrolled at Pastor Wetzel's school at Possendorf, near Dresden, where he received some piano instruction from his Latin teacher. He struggled to play a proper
scale at the keyboard and preferred playing theatre overtures
by ear. Following Geyer's death in 1821, Richard was sent to the
Kreuzschule
The ''Kreuzschule'' (German for "School of the Cross") in Dresden (also known by its Latin name, ''schola crucis'') is the oldest surviving school in Dresden and one of the oldest in Germany. As early as 1300, a schoolmaster (''Cunradus puerorum re ...
, the boarding school of the
Dresdner Kreuzchor
The Dresdner Kreuzchor is the boys' choir of the Kreuzkirche in Dresden, Germany. It has a seven-century history and a world-wide reputation. Today, the choir has about 150 members between the ages of 9 and 19, from Dresden and the surroundin ...
, at the expense of Geyer's brother. At the age of nine he was hugely impressed by the
Gothic
Gothic or Gothics may refer to:
People and languages
*Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes
**Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths
**Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
elements of
Carl Maria von Weber
Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber (18 or 19 November 17865 June 1826) was a German composer, conductor, virtuoso pianist, guitarist, and critic who was one of the first significant composers of the Romantic era. Best known for his opera ...
's opera ''
Der Freischütz
' ( J. 277, Op. 77 ''The Marksman'' or ''The Freeshooter'') is a German opera with spoken dialogue in three acts by Carl Maria von Weber with a libretto by Friedrich Kind, based on a story by Johann August Apel and Friedrich Laun from their 181 ...
,'' which he saw Weber conduct. At this period Wagner entertained ambitions as a playwright. His first creative effort, listed in the ''
Wagner-Werk-Verzeichnis The ''Wagner-Werk-Verzeichnis'' (''Catalogue of Wagner's Works''), abbreviated WWV, is an index and musicological guide to the 113 musical compositions and works for the stage by Richard Wagner. It includes guidance on editions of the published work ...
'' (the standard listing of Wagner's works) as WWV 1, was a tragedy called ''
Leubald
''Leubald'' was an attempt by the youthful Richard Wagner to write a tragic drama in the Shakespearean genre. It occupied him during the years 1827-28 while he was at school, first in Dresden and later in Leipzig. The play combines elements of ' ...
.'' Begun when he was in school in 1826, the play was strongly influenced by
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
and
Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as treat ...
. Wagner was determined to set it to music and persuaded his family to allow him music lessons.
By 1827, the family had returned to Leipzig. Wagner's first lessons in
harmony
In music, harmony is the process by which individual sounds are joined together or composed into whole units or compositions. Often, the term harmony refers to simultaneously occurring frequencies, pitches ( tones, notes), or chords. However ...
were taken during 1828–1831 with Christian Gottlieb Müller. In January 1828 he first heard
Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classical ...
's
7th Symphony and then, in March, the same composer's
9th Symphony (both at the
Gewandhaus
Gewandhaus is a concert hall in Leipzig, the home of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Today's hall is the third to bear this name; like the second, it is noted for its fine acoustics.
History
The first Gewandhaus (''Altes Gewandhaus'')
The f ...
). Beethoven became a major inspiration, and Wagner wrote a piano transcription of the 9th Symphony. He was also greatly impressed by a performance of
Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his ra ...
's ''
Requiem
A Requiem or Requiem Mass, also known as Mass for the dead ( la, Missa pro defunctis) or Mass of the dead ( la, Missa defunctorum), is a Mass of the Catholic Church offered for the repose of the soul or souls of one or more deceased persons, ...
.'' Wagner's early
piano sonata
A piano sonata is a sonata written for a solo piano. Piano sonatas are usually written in three or four movements, although some piano sonatas have been written with a single movement ( Scarlatti, Liszt, Scriabin, Medtner, Berg), others with t ...
s and his first attempts at orchestral
overture
Overture (from French ''ouverture'', "opening") in music was originally the instrumental introduction to a ballet, opera, or oratorio in the 17th century. During the early Romantic era, composers such as Beethoven and Mendelssohn composed overt ...
s date from this period.
In 1829 he saw a performance by
dramatic soprano
A dramatic soprano is a type of operatic soprano with a powerful, rich, emotive voice that can sing over, or cut through, a full orchestra. Thicker vocal folds in dramatic voices usually (but not always) mean less agility than lighter voices but a ...
Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient
Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, born Wilhelmine Schröder (6 December 180426 January 1860), was a German operatic soprano. As a singer, she combined a rare quality of tone with dramatic intensity of expression, which was as remarkable on the conce ...
, and she became his ideal of the fusion of drama and music in opera. In ''Mein Leben'', Wagner wrote, "When I look back across my entire life I find no event to place beside this in the impression it produced on me," and claimed that the "profoundly human and ecstatic performance of this incomparable artist" kindled in him an "almost demonic fire."
In 1831, Wagner enrolled at the
Leipzig University
Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 December ...
, where he became a member of the Saxon
student fraternity
Fraternities and sororities are social organizations at colleges and universities in North America.
Generally, membership in a fraternity or sorority is obtained as an undergraduate student, but continues thereafter for life. Some accept gradua ...
. He took composition lessons with the
Thomaskantor
(Cantor at St. Thomas) is the common name for the musical director of the , now an internationally known boys' choir founded in Leipzig in 1212. The official historic title of the Thomaskantor in Latin, ', describes the two functions of cantor a ...
Theodor Weinlig. Weinlig was so impressed with Wagner's musical ability that he refused any payment for his lessons. He arranged for his pupil's Piano Sonata in B-flat major (which was consequently dedicated to him) to be published as Wagner's Op. 1. A year later, Wagner composed his
Symphony in C major, a Beethovenesque work performed in Prague in 1832 and at the Leipzig Gewandhaus in 1833. He then began to work on an opera, ''
Die Hochzeit
''Die Hochzeit'' (''The Wedding'', WWV 31) is an unfinished opera by Richard Wagner which predates his completed works in the genre. Wagner completed the libretto, then started composing the music in the second half of 1832 when he was just ninete ...
'' (''The Wedding''), which he never completed.
Early career and marriage (1833–1842)
![Minna](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Minna.jpg)
In 1833, Wagner's brother Albert managed to obtain for him a position as choirmaster at the theatre in
Würzburg
Würzburg (; Main-Franconian: ) is a city in the region of Franconia in the north of the German state of Bavaria. Würzburg is the administrative seat of the ''Regierungsbezirk'' Lower Franconia. It spans the banks of the Main River.
Würzburg is ...
. In the same year, at the age of 20, Wagner composed his first complete opera, ''
Die Feen
''Die Feen'' (, ''The Fairies'') is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. The German libretto was written by the composer after Carlo Gozzi's ''La donna serpente''. ''Die Feen'' was Wagner's first completed opera, but remained unperformed in h ...
'' (''The Fairies''). This work, which imitated the style of Weber, went unproduced until half a century later, when it was premiered in
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...
shortly after the composer's death in 1883.
Having returned to Leipzig in 1834, Wagner held a brief appointment as musical director at the opera house in
Magdeburg
Magdeburg (; nds, label=Low Saxon, Meideborg ) is the capital and second-largest city of the German state Saxony-Anhalt. The city is situated at the Elbe river.
Otto I, the first Holy Roman Emperor and founder of the Archdiocese of Magdebur ...
during which he wrote ''
Das Liebesverbot
' (''The Ban on Love'', WWV 38), is an early comic opera in two acts by Richard Wagner, with the libretto written by the composer after Shakespeare's '' Measure for Measure''. Described as a ', it was composed in early 1836.
Restrained sexual ...
'' (''The Ban on Love''), based on Shakespeare's ''
Measure for Measure
''Measure for Measure'' is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1603 or 1604 and first performed in 1604, according to available records. It was published in the ''First Folio'' of 1623.
The play's plot features its ...
''. This was staged at Magdeburg in 1836 but closed before the second performance; this, together with the financial collapse of the theatre company employing him, left the composer in bankruptcy. Wagner had fallen for one of the leading ladies at Magdeburg, the actress
Christine Wilhelmine "Minna" Planer and after the disaster of ''Das Liebesverbot'' he followed her to
Königsberg
Königsberg (, ) was the historic Prussian city that is now Kaliningrad, Russia. Königsberg was founded in 1255 on the site of the ancient Old Prussian settlement ''Twangste'' by the Teutonic Knights during the Northern Crusades, and was named ...
, where she helped him to get an engagement at the theatre. The two married in
Tragheim Church
Tragheim Church, 1930
Tragheim Church (german: Tragheimer Kirche) was a Protestant church in the Tragheim quarter of Königsberg, Germany.
History
At the beginning of the 17th century the Lutheran residents of Tragheim attended Löbenicht Chur ...
on 24 November 1836. In May 1837, Minna left Wagner for another man, and this was but only the first débâcle of a tempestuous marriage. In June 1837, Wagner moved to
Riga
Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the Ba ...
(then in the
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
), where he became music director of the local opera; having in this capacity engaged Minna's sister Amalie (also a singer) for the theatre, he presently resumed relations with Minna during 1838.
By 1839, the couple had amassed such large debts that they fled Riga on the run from creditors. Debts would plague Wagner for most of his life. Initially they took a stormy sea passage to London, from which Wagner drew the inspiration for his opera ''
Der fliegende Holländer
' (''The Flying Dutchman''), WWV 63, is a German-language opera, with libretto and music by Richard Wagner. The central theme is redemption through love. Wagner conducted the premiere at the Königliches Hoftheater Dresden in 1843.
Wagner claim ...
'' (''The Flying Dutchman''), with a plot based on a sketch by
Heinrich Heine
Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (; born Harry Heine; 13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856) was a German poet, writer and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of '' Lied ...
. The Wagners settled in Paris in September 1839 and stayed there until 1842. Wagner made a scant living by writing articles and short novelettes such as ''A pilgrimage to Beethoven'', which sketched his growing concept of "music drama", and ''An end in Paris'', where he depicts his own miseries as a German musician in the French metropolis. He also provided arrangements of operas by other composers, largely on behalf of the
Schlesinger publishing house. During this stay he completed his third and fourth operas ''
Rienzi
' (''Rienzi, the last of the tribunes''; WWV 49) is an early opera by Richard Wagner in five acts, with the libretto written by the composer after Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel of the same name (1835). The title is commonly shortened to ''Rienzi ...
'' and ''Der fliegende Holländer''.
Dresden (1842–1849)
![Richard Wagner c](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Richard_Wagner_c.1840.jpg)
Wagner had completed ''Rienzi'' in 1840. With the strong support of
Giacomo Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer (born Jakob Liebmann Beer; 5 September 1791 – 2 May 1864) was a German opera composer, "the most frequently performed opera composer during the nineteenth century, linking Mozart and Wagner". With his 1831 opera ''Robert le di ...
, it was accepted for performance by the Dresden
Court Theatre (''Hofoper'') in the
Kingdom of Saxony
The Kingdom of Saxony (german: Königreich Sachsen), lasting from 1806 to 1918, was an independent member of a number of historical confederacies in Napoleonic through post-Napoleonic Germany. The kingdom was formed from the Electorate of Saxon ...
and in 1842, Wagner moved to Dresden. His relief at returning to Germany was recorded in his "
Autobiographic Sketch" of 1842, where he wrote that, en route from Paris, "For the first time I saw the
Rhine
), Surselva, Graubünden, Switzerland
, source1_coordinates=
, source1_elevation =
, source2 = Rein Posteriur/Hinterrhein
, source2_location = Paradies Glacier, Graubünden, Switzerland
, source2_coordinates=
, so ...
—with hot tears in my eyes, I, poor artist, swore eternal fidelity to my German fatherland." ''Rienzi'' was staged to considerable acclaim on 20 October.
Wagner lived in Dresden for the next six years, eventually being appointed the Royal Saxon Court Conductor. During this period, he staged there ''Der fliegende Holländer'' (2 January 1843) and
''Tannhäuser'' (19 October 1845), the first two of his three middle-period operas. Wagner also mixed with artistic circles in Dresden, including the composer
Ferdinand Hiller
Ferdinand (von) Hiller (24 October 1811 – 11 May 1885) was a German composer, Conductor (music), conductor, pianist, writer and music director.
Biography
Ferdinand Hiller was born to a wealthy Jewish family in Frankfurt am Main, where his fat ...
and the architect
Gottfried Semper
Gottfried Semper (; 29 November 1803 – 15 May 1879) was a German architect, art critic, and professor of architecture who designed and built the Semper Opera House in Dresden between 1838 and 1841. In 1849 he took part in the May Uprising in ...
.
Wagner's involvement in
left-wing politics
Left-wing politics describes the range of Ideology#Political%20ideologies, political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically in ...
abruptly ended his welcome in Dresden. Wagner was active among
socialist
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...
German nationalists there, regularly receiving such guests as the conductor and radical editor
August Röckel
Carl August Röckel (1 December 1814 – 18 June 1876) was a German composer and conductor. He was a friend of Richard Wagner and active in the Revolutions of 1848.
Biography
Röckel was born in Graz. His father, Joseph August Röckel, was a ten ...
and the Russian
anarchist
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not neces ...
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (; 1814–1876) was a Russian revolutionary anarchist, socialist and founder of collectivist anarchism. He is considered among the most influential figures of anarchism and a major founder of the revolutionary ...
. He was also influenced by the ideas of
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (, , ; 15 January 1809, Besançon – 19 January 1865, Paris) was a French socialist,Landauer, Carl; Landauer, Hilde Stein; Valkenier, Elizabeth Kridl (1979) 959 "The Three Anticapitalistic Movements". ''European Socia ...
and
Ludwig Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach (; 28 July 1804 – 13 September 1872) was a German anthropologist and philosopher, best known for his book ''The Essence of Christianity'', which provided a critique of Christianity that strongly influenced gener ...
. Widespread discontent came to a head in 1849, when the unsuccessful
May Uprising in Dresden
The May Uprising took place in Dresden, Kingdom of Saxony in 1849; it was one of the last of the series of events known as the Revolutions of 1848.
Events leading to the May Uprising
In the German states, revolutions began in March 1848, start ...
broke out, in which Wagner played a
minor supporting role. Warrants were issued for the revolutionaries' arrest. Wagner had to flee, first visiting Paris and then settling in
Zürich
Zürich () is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zürich. It is located in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zürich. As of January 2020, the municipality has 43 ...
where he at first took refuge with a friend,
Alexander Müller.
In exile: Switzerland (1849–1858)
![Richard Wagners Steckbrief 1849](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Richard_Wagners_Steckbrief_1849.jpg)
Wagner was to spend the next twelve years in exile from Germany. He had completed ''
Lohengrin
Lohengrin () is a character in German Arthurian literature. The son of Parzival (Percival), he is a knight of the Holy Grail sent in a boat pulled by swans to rescue a maiden who can never ask his identity. His story, which first appears in Wolf ...
'', the last of his middle-period operas, before the Dresden uprising, and now wrote desperately to his friend
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt, in modern usage ''Liszt Ferenc'' . Liszt's Hungarian passport spelled his given name as "Ferencz". An orthographic reform of the Hungarian language in 1922 (which was 36 years after Liszt's death) changed the letter "cz" to simpl ...
to have it staged in his absence. Liszt conducted the premiere in
Weimar
Weimar is a city in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together with the neighbouri ...
in August 1850.
Nevertheless, Wagner was in grim personal straits, isolated from the German musical world and without any regular income. In 1850, Julie, the wife of his friend Karl Ritter, began to pay him a small pension which she maintained until 1859. With help from her friend Jessie Laussot, this was to have been augmented to an annual sum of 3,000
Thaler
A thaler (; also taler, from german: Taler) is one of the large silver coins minted in the states and territories of the Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburg monarchy during the Early Modern period. A ''thaler'' size silver coin has a diameter of ...
s per year, but the plan was abandoned when Wagner began an affair with Mme. Laussot. Wagner even plotted an elopement with her in 1850, which her husband prevented. Meanwhile, Wagner's wife Minna, who had disliked the operas he had written after ''Rienzi'', was falling into a deepening
depression. Wagner fell victim to ill-health, according to
Ernest Newman
Ernest Newman (30 November 1868 – 7 July 1959) was an English music critic and musicologist. ''Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' describes him as "the most celebrated British music critic in the first half of the 20th century." His ...
"largely a matter of overwrought nerves", which made it difficult for him to continue writing.
Wagner's primary published output during his first years in Zürich was a set of essays. In "
The Artwork of the Future
"The Artwork of the Future" (german: Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft) is a long essay written by Richard Wagner, first published in 1849 in Leipzig, in which he sets out some of his ideals on the topics of art in general and music drama in particular.
...
" (1849), he described a vision of opera as ''
Gesamtkunstwerk
A ''Gesamtkunstwerk'' (, literally 'total artwork', translated as 'total work of art', 'ideal work of art', 'universal artwork', 'synthesis of the arts', 'comprehensive artwork', or 'all-embracing art form') is a work of art that makes use of al ...
'' ("total work of art"), in which the various arts such as music, song, dance, poetry, visual arts and stagecraft were unified. "
Judaism in Music
"Das Judenthum in der Musik" (German for "Jewishness in Music", but normally translated ''Judaism in Music''; spelled after its first publications, according to modern German spelling practice, as ‘Judentum’) is an essay by Richard Wagner whi ...
" (1850) was the first of Wagner's writings to feature
antisemitic
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
views. In this polemic Wagner argued, frequently using traditional antisemitic abuse, that Jews had no connection to the German spirit, and were thus capable of producing only shallow and artificial music. According to him, they composed music to achieve popularity and, thereby, financial success, as opposed to creating genuine works of art.
In "
Opera and Drama
Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libretti ...
" (1851), Wagner described the
aesthetics
Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed thr ...
of drama that he was using to create the ''Ring'' operas. Before leaving Dresden, Wagner had drafted a scenario that eventually became the four-opera cycle ''
Der Ring des Nibelungen
(''The Ring of the Nibelung''), WWV 86, is a cycle of four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. The works are based loosely on characters from Germanic heroic legend, namely Norse legendary sagas and the '' Nibe ...
''. He initially
wrote the libretto for a single opera, ''Siegfrieds Tod'' (''Siegfried's Death''), in 1848. After arriving in Zürich, he expanded the story with the opera ''Der junge Siegfried'' (''Young Siegfried''), which explored the
hero's
Hero's was a Japanese mixed martial arts promotion operated by Fighting and Entertainment Group, the parent entity behind kickboxing organization K-1. Grown from and branched off of K-1's earlier experiments in MMA, including the ''K-1 Romanex' ...
background. He completed the text of the cycle by writing the libretti for ''
Die Walküre
(; ''The Valkyrie''), WWV 86B, is the second of the four music dramas that constitute Richard Wagner's ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' (English: ''The Ring of the Nibelung''). It was performed, as a single opera, at the National Theatre Munich on ...
'' (''The
Valkyrie
In Norse mythology, a valkyrie ("chooser of the slain") is one of a host of female figures who guide souls of the dead to the god Odin's hall Valhalla. There, the deceased warriors become (Old Norse "single (or once) fighters"Orchard (1997:36) ...
'') and ''
Das Rheingold
''Das Rheingold'' (; ''The Rhinegold''), WWV 86A, is the first of the four music dramas that constitute Richard Wagner's ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' (English: ''The Ring of the Nibelung''). It was performed, as a single opera, at the National ...
'' (''The Rhine Gold'') and revising the other libretti to agree with his new concept, completing them in 1852. The concept of opera expressed in "Opera and Drama" and in other essays effectively renounced the operas he had previously written, up to and including ''Lohengrin.'' Partly in an attempt to explain his change of views, Wagner published in 1851 the autobiographical "
A Communication to My Friends "Eine Mitteilung an meine Freunde", usually referred to in English by its translated title (from German language, German) of "A Communication to My Friends", is an extensive autobiography, autobiographical work by Richard Wagner, published in 1851, ...
". This contained his first public announcement of what was to become the ''Ring'' cycle:
I shall never write an ''Opera'' more. As I have no wish to invent an arbitrary title for my works, I will call them Dramas ...
I propose to produce my myth in three complete dramas, preceded by a lengthy Prelude (Vorspiel). ...
At a specially-appointed Festival, I propose, some future time, to produce those three Dramas with their Prelude, ''in the course of three days and a fore-evening'' mphasis in original
Wagner began composing the music for ''Das Rheingold'' between November 1853 and September 1854, following it immediately with ''Die Walküre'' (written between June 1854 and March 1856). He began work on the third ''Ring'' opera, which he now called simply ''
Siegfried
Siegfried is a German-language male given name, composed from the Germanic elements ''sig'' "victory" and ''frithu'' "protection, peace".
The German name has the Old Norse cognate ''Sigfriðr, Sigfrøðr'', which gives rise to Swedish ''Sigfrid' ...
,'' probably in September 1856, but by June 1857 he had completed only the first two acts. He decided to put the work aside to concentrate on a new idea: ''
Tristan und Isolde
''Tristan und Isolde'' (''Tristan and Isolde''), WWV 90, is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the 12th-century romance Tristan and Iseult by Gottfried von Strassburg. It was compose ...
,'' based on the
Arthurian
King Arthur ( cy, Brenin Arthur, kw, Arthur Gernow, br, Roue Arzhur) is a Legend, legendary king of Great Britain, Britain, and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as the Matter of Britain.
In the earliest tradition ...
love story ''
Tristan and Iseult
Tristan and Iseult, also known as Tristan and Isolde and other names, is a medieval chivalric romance told in numerous variations since the 12th century. Based on a Celtic legend and possibly other sources, the tale is a tragedy about the illic ...
.''
![Mathilde Wesendonck by Karl Ferdinand Sohn, 1850](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Mathilde_Wesendonck_by_Karl_Ferdinand_Sohn%2C_1850.jpg)
One source of inspiration for ''Tristan und Isolde'' was the philosophy of
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the prod ...
, notably his ''
The World as Will and Representation
''The World as Will and Representation'' (''WWR''; german: Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, ''WWV''), sometimes translated as ''The World as Will and Idea'', is the central work of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. The first edition ...
,'' to which Wagner had been introduced in 1854 by his poet friend
Georg Herwegh
Georg Friedrich Rudolph Theodor Herwegh (31 May 1817 – 7 April 1875) was a German poet,Herwegh, Georg, The Columbia Encyclopedia (2008) who is considered part of the Young Germany movement.
Biography
He was born in Stuttgart on 31 May 1817, th ...
. Wagner later called this the most important event of his life. His personal circumstances certainly made him an easy convert to what he understood to be Schopenhauer's philosophy, a deeply pessimistic view of the human condition. He remained an adherent of Schopenhauer for the rest of his life.
One of Schopenhauer's doctrines was that music held a supreme role in the arts as a direct expression of the world's essence, namely, blind, impulsive will. This doctrine contradicted Wagner's view, expressed in "Opera and Drama", that the music in opera had to be subservient to the drama. Wagner scholars have argued that Schopenhauer's influence caused Wagner to assign a more commanding role to music in his later operas, including the latter half of the ''Ring'' cycle, which he had yet to compose. Aspects of Schopenhauerian doctrine found their way into Wagner's subsequent libretti.
A second source of inspiration was Wagner's infatuation with the poet-writer
Mathilde Wesendonck
Agnes Mathilde Wesendonck (née Luckemeyer; 23 December 182831 August 1902) was a German poet and author. The words of five of her verses were the basis of Richard Wagner's ''Wesendonck Lieder''; the composer was infatuated with her, and his w ...
, the wife of the silk merchant Otto Wesendonck. Wagner met the Wesendoncks, who were both great admirers of his music, in Zürich in 1852. From May 1853 onwards Wesendonck made several loans to Wagner to finance his household expenses in Zürich, and in 1857 placed a cottage on his estate at Wagner's disposal, which became known as the ''Asyl'' ("asylum" or "place of rest"). During this period, Wagner's growing passion for his patron's wife inspired him to put aside work on the ''Ring'' cycle (which was not resumed for the next twelve years) and begin work on ''Tristan''. While planning the opera, Wagner composed the ''
Wesendonck Lieder
, Wagner-Werk-Verzeichnis, WWV 91, is the common name of a set of five songs for female voice and piano by Richard Wagner, (''Five Poems for a Female Voice''). He set five poems by Mathilde Wesendonck while he was working on his opera ''Tristan u ...
,'' five songs for voice and piano, setting poems by Mathilde. Two of these settings are explicitly subtitled by Wagner as "studies for ''Tristan und Isolde''".
Among the conducting engagements that Wagner undertook for revenue during this period, he gave several concerts in 1855 with the
Philharmonic Society of London
The Royal Philharmonic Society (RPS) is a British music society, formed in 1813. Its original purpose was to promote performances of instrumental music in London. Many composers and performers have taken part in its concerts. It is now a memb ...
, including one before
Queen Victoria
Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until Death and state funeral of Queen Victoria, her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 21 ...
. The Queen enjoyed his ''Tannhäuser'' overture and spoke with Wagner after the concert, writing of him in her diary that he was "short, very quiet, wears spectacles & has a very finely-developed forehead, a hooked nose & projecting chin."
In exile: Venice and Paris (1858–1862)
![Richard Wagner, Paris, 1861](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Richard_Wagner%2C_Paris%2C_1861.jpg)
Wagner's uneasy affair with Mathilde collapsed in 1858, when Minna intercepted a letter to Mathilde from him. After the resulting confrontation with Minna, Wagner left Zürich alone, bound for
Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...
, where he rented an apartment in the
Palazzo Giustinian
The Palazzo Giustinian is a palace in Venice, northern Italy, situated in the Dorsoduro district and overlooking the Grand Canal next to Ca' Foscari. It is among the best examples of the late Venetian Gothic and was the final residence of Pri ...
, while Minna returned to Germany. Wagner's attitude to Minna had changed; the editor of his correspondence with her, John Burk, has said that she was to him "an invalid, to be treated with kindness and consideration, but, except at a distance,
asa menace to his peace of mind." Wagner continued his correspondence with Mathilde and his friendship with her husband Otto, who maintained his financial support of the composer. In an 1859 letter to Mathilde, Wagner wrote, half-satirically, of ''Tristan'': "Child! This Tristan is turning into something ''terrible''. This final act!!!—I fear the opera will be banned ... only mediocre performances can save me! Perfectly good ones will be bound to drive people mad."
In November 1859, Wagner once again moved to Paris to oversee production of a new revision of ''Tannhäuser'', staged thanks to the efforts of Princess
Pauline von Metternich
Pauline Clémentine Marie Walburga, Princess of Metternich-Winneburg zu Beilstein (''née'' Countess Pauline Sándor de Szlavnicza; 25 February 1836 – 28 September 1921) was a famous Austrian socialite, mainly active in Vienna and Paris. Known f ...
, whose husband was the Austrian ambassador in Paris. The performances of the Paris ''Tannhäuser'' in 1861 were
a notable fiasco. This was partly a consequence of the conservative tastes of the
Jockey Club
The Jockey Club is the largest commercial horse racing organisation in the United Kingdom. It owns 15 of Britain's famous racecourses, including Aintree, Cheltenham, Epsom Downs and both the Rowley Mile and July Course in Newmarket, amo ...
, which organised demonstrations in the theatre to protest at the presentation of the ballet feature in act 1 (instead of its traditional location in the second act); but the opportunity was also exploited by those who wanted to use the occasion as a veiled political protest against the pro-Austrian policies of
Napoleon III
Napoleon III (Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte; 20 April 18089 January 1873) was the first President of France (as Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte) from 1848 to 1852 and the last monarch of France as Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870. A nephew ...
. It was during this visit that Wagner met the French poet
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poetry, French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist and art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticis ...
, who wrote an appreciative brochure, "". The opera was withdrawn after the third performance and Wagner left Paris soon after. He had sought a reconciliation with Minna during this Paris visit, and although she joined him there, the reunion was not successful and they again parted from each other when Wagner left.
Return and resurgence (1862–1871)
The political ban that had been placed on Wagner in Germany after he had fled Dresden was fully lifted in 1862. The composer settled in
Biebrich, on the Rhine near Wiesbaden in
Hesse
Hesse (, , ) or Hessia (, ; german: Hessen ), officially the State of Hessen (german: links=no, Land Hessen), is a States of Germany, state in Germany. Its capital city is Wiesbaden, and the largest urban area is Frankfurt. Two other major histor ...
. Here Minna visited him for the last time: they parted irrevocably, though Wagner continued to give financial support to her while she lived in Dresden until her death in 1866.
![De 20 jarige Ludwig II in kroningsmantel door Ferdinand von Piloty 1865](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/K%C3%B6nig_Ludwig_II._von_Bayern_in_Generalsuniform_mit_dem_Kr%C3%B6nungsmantel.jpg)
In Biebrich, Wagner at last began work on ''Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg'', his only mature comedy. Wagner wrote a first draft of the libretto in 1845, and he had resolved to develop it during a visit he had made to Venice with the Wesendoncks in 1860, where he was inspired by
Titian
Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio (; 27 August 1576), known in English as Titian ( ), was an Italians, Italian (Republic of Venice, Venetian) painter of the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school (art), ...
's painting ''
The Assumption of the Virgin''. Throughout this period (1861–1864) Wagner sought to have ''Tristan und Isolde'' produced in Vienna. Despite many rehearsals, the opera remained unperformed, and gained a reputation as being "impossible" to sing, which added to Wagner's financial problems.
Wagner's fortunes took a dramatic upturn in 1864, when
King Ludwig II
Ludwig II (Ludwig Otto Friedrich Wilhelm; 25 August 1845 – 13 June 1886) was King of Bavaria from 1864 until his death in 1886. He is sometimes called the Swan King or ('the Fairy Tale King'). He also held the titles of Count Palatine of the ...
succeeded to the throne of
Bavaria
Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...
at the age of 18. The young king, an ardent admirer of Wagner's operas, had the composer brought to Munich. The King, who was homosexual, expressed in his correspondence a passionate personal adoration for the composer, and Wagner in his responses had no scruples about feigning reciprocal feelings. Ludwig settled Wagner's considerable debts, and proposed to stage ''Tristan'', ''Die Meistersinger'', the ''Ring'', and the other operas Wagner planned. Wagner also began to dictate his autobiography, ''Mein Leben'', at the King's request. Wagner noted that his rescue by Ludwig coincided with news of the death of his earlier mentor (but later supposed enemy) Giacomo Meyerbeer, and regretted that "this operatic master, who had done me so much harm, should not have lived to see this day."
After grave difficulties in rehearsal, ''Tristan und Isolde'' premiered at the
National Theatre Munich
The National Theatre (german: link=no, Nationaltheater) on Max-Joseph-Platz in Munich, Germany, is a historic opera house, home of the Bavarian State Opera, Bavarian State Orchestra and the Bavarian State Ballet.
Building
First theatre ...
on 10 June 1865, the first Wagner opera premiere in almost 15 years. (The premiere had been scheduled for 15 May, but was delayed by bailiffs acting for Wagner's creditors, and also because the Isolde,
Malvina Schnorr von Carolsfeld, was hoarse and needed time to recover.) The conductor of this premiere was
Hans von Bülow
Freiherr Hans Guido von Bülow (8 January 1830 – 12 February 1894) was a German conductor, virtuoso pianist, and composer of the Romantic era. As one of the most distinguished conductors of the 19th century, his activity was critical for es ...
, whose wife,
Cosima, had given birth in April that year to a daughter, named
Isolde, a child not of Bülow but of Wagner.
Cosima was 24 years younger than Wagner and was herself illegitimate, the daughter of the Countess
Marie d'Agoult
Marie Cathérine Sophie, Comtesse d'Agoult (née de Flavigny; 31 December 18055 March 1876), was a Franco-German romantic author and historian, known also by her pen name, Daniel Stern.
Life
Marie was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, with th ...
, who had left her husband for
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt, in modern usage ''Liszt Ferenc'' . Liszt's Hungarian passport spelled his given name as "Ferencz". An orthographic reform of the Hungarian language in 1922 (which was 36 years after Liszt's death) changed the letter "cz" to simpl ...
. Liszt initially disapproved of his daughter's involvement with Wagner, though nevertheless, the two men were friends. The indiscreet affair scandalised Munich, and Wagner also fell into disfavour with many leading members of the court, who were suspicious of his influence on the King. In December 1865, Ludwig was finally forced to ask the composer to leave Munich. He apparently also toyed with the idea of abdicating to follow his hero into exile, but Wagner quickly dissuaded him.
Ludwig installed Wagner at the
Villa Tribschen
The Richard Wagner Museum is a cultural site in Lucerne, Switzerland, situated on the shore of Lake Lucerne in the district of Tribschen. The composer Richard Wagner lived here from 1866 to 1872; in 1933 it was opened as a museum.
History
The bui ...
, beside Switzerland's
Lake Lucerne
__NOTOC__
Lake Lucerne (german: Vierwaldstättersee, literally "Lake of the four forested settlements" (in English usually translated as ''forest cantons''), french: lac des Quatre-Cantons, it, lago dei Quattro Cantoni) is a lake in central ...
. ''Die Meistersinger'' was completed at Tribschen in 1867, and premiered in Munich on 21 June the following year. At Ludwig's insistence, "special previews" of the first two works of the ''Ring'', ''Das Rheingold'' and ''Die Walküre'', were performed at Munich in 1869 and 1870, but Wagner retained his dream, first expressed in "A Communication to My Friends", to present the first complete cycle at a special festival with a new, dedicated,
opera house
An opera house is a theatre building used for performances of opera. It usually includes a stage, an orchestra pit, audience seating, and backstage facilities for costumes and building sets.
While some venues are constructed specifically for o ...
.
Minna had died of a heart attack on 25 January 1866 in Dresden. Wagner did not attend the funeral. Following Minna's death Cosima wrote to Hans von Bülow several times asking him to grant her a divorce, but Bülow refused to concede this. He consented only after she had two more children with Wagner; another daughter, named Eva, after the heroine of ''Meistersinger'', and a son
Siegfried
Siegfried is a German-language male given name, composed from the Germanic elements ''sig'' "victory" and ''frithu'' "protection, peace".
The German name has the Old Norse cognate ''Sigfriðr, Sigfrøðr'', which gives rise to Swedish ''Sigfrid' ...
, named for the hero of the ''Ring''. The divorce was finally sanctioned, after delays in the legal process, by a Berlin court on 18 July 1870. Richard and Cosima's wedding took place on 25 August 1870. On Christmas Day of that year, Wagner arranged a surprise performance (its premiere) of the ''
Siegfried Idyll
The ', WWV 103, by Richard Wagner is a symphonic poem for chamber orchestra.
Background
Wagner composed the ''Siegfried Idyll'' as a birthday present to his second wife, Cosima, after the birth of their son Siegfried in 1869. It was first perf ...
'' for Cosima's birthday. The marriage to Cosima lasted to the end of Wagner's life.
Wagner, settled into his new-found domesticity, turned his energies towards completing the ''Ring'' cycle. He had not abandoned polemics: he republished his 1850 pamphlet "Judaism in Music", originally issued under a pseudonym, under his own name in 1869. He extended the introduction, and wrote a lengthy additional final section. The publication led to several public protests at early performances of ''Die Meistersinger'' in Vienna and Mannheim.
Bayreuth (1871–1876)
In 1871, Wagner decided to move to
Bayreuth
Bayreuth (, ; bar, Bareid) is a town in northern Bavaria, Germany, on the Red Main river in a valley between the Franconian Jura and the Fichtelgebirge Mountains. The town's roots date back to 1194. In the 21st century, it is the capital of U ...
, which was to be the location of his new opera house. The town council donated a large plot of land—the "Green Hill"—as a site for the theatre. The Wagners moved to the town the following year, and the foundation stone for the
Bayreuth Festspielhaus
The ''Bayreuth Festspielhaus'' or Bayreuth Festival Theatre (german: link=no, Bayreuther Festspielhaus, ) is an opera house north of Bayreuth, Germany, built by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner and dedicated solely to the performa ...
("Festival Theatre") was laid. Wagner initially announced the first Bayreuth Festival, at which for the first time the ''Ring'' cycle would be presented complete, for 1873, but since Ludwig had declined to finance the project, the start of building was delayed and the proposed date for the festival was deferred. To raise funds for the construction, "
Wagner societies" were formed in several cities, and Wagner began touring Germany conducting concerts. By the spring of 1873, only a third of the required funds had been raised; further pleas to Ludwig were initially ignored, but early in 1874, with the project on the verge of collapse, the King relented and provided a loan. The full building programme included the family home, "
Wahnfried
Wahnfried was the name given by Richard Wagner to his villa in Bayreuth. The name is a German compound of (delusion, madness) and (peace, freedom).
Financed by King Ludwig II of Bavaria, the house was constructed from 1872 to 1874 under Bayr ...
", into which Wagner, with Cosima and the children, moved from their temporary accommodation on 18 April 1874. The theatre was completed in 1875, and the festival scheduled for the following year. Commenting on the struggle to finish the building, Wagner remarked to Cosima: "Each stone is red with my blood and yours".
![Festspielhaus Bayreuth 1900](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/Festspielhaus_Bayreuth_1900.jpg)
For the design of the Festspielhaus, Wagner appropriated some of the ideas of his former colleague, Gottfried Semper, which he had previously solicited for a proposed new opera house at Munich. Wagner was responsible for several theatrical innovations at Bayreuth; these include darkening the auditorium during performances, and placing the orchestra in a pit out of view of the audience.
The Festspielhaus finally opened on 13 August 1876 with ''Das Rheingold'', at last taking its place as the first evening of the complete ''Ring'' cycle; the 1876
Bayreuth Festival
The Bayreuth Festival (german: link=no, Bayreuther Festspiele) is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner are presented. Wagner himself conceived ...
therefore saw the premiere of the complete cycle, performed as a sequence as the composer had intended. The 1876 Festival consisted of three full ''Ring'' cycles (under the baton of
Hans Richter). At the end, critical reactions ranged between that of the Norwegian composer
Edvard Grieg
Edvard Hagerup Grieg ( , ; 15 June 18434 September 1907) was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is widely considered one of the foremost Romantic era composers, and his music is part of the standard classical repertoire worldwide. His use of ...
, who thought the work "divinely composed", and that of the French newspaper ''
Le Figaro
''Le Figaro'' () is a French daily morning newspaper founded in 1826. It is headquartered on Boulevard Haussmann in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. The oldest national newspaper in France, ''Le Figaro'' is one of three French newspapers of reco ...
'', which called the music "the dream of a lunatic". The disillusioned included Wagner's friend and disciple
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ...
, who, having published his eulogistic essay "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth" before the festival as part of his ''
Untimely Meditations
''Untimely Meditations'' (german: Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen), also translated as ''Unfashionable Observations'' and ''Thoughts Out of Season'', consists of four works by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, started in 1873 and completed in 18 ...
'', was bitterly disappointed by what he saw as Wagner's pandering to increasingly exclusivist German nationalism; his breach with Wagner began at this time. The festival firmly established Wagner as an artist of European, and indeed world, importance: attendees included
Kaiser Wilhelm I
William I or Wilhelm I (german: Wilhelm Friedrich Ludwig; 22 March 1797 – 9 March 1888) was King of Prussia from 2 January 1861 and German Emperor from 18 January 1871 until his death in 1888. A member of the House of Hohenzollern, he was the f ...
, the Emperor
Pedro II of Brazil
Don (honorific), Dom PedroII (2 December 1825 – 5 December 1891), nicknamed "the Magnanimity, Magnanimous" ( pt, O Magnânimo), was the List of monarchs of Brazil, second and last monarch of the Empire of Brazil, reigning for over 58 years. ...
,
Anton Bruckner
Josef Anton Bruckner (; 4 September 182411 October 1896) was an Austrian composer, organist, and music theorist best known for his symphonies, masses, Te Deum and motets. The first are considered emblematic of the final stage of Austro-Germ ...
,
Camille Saint-Saëns
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns (; 9 October 183516 December 1921) was a French composer, organist, conductor and pianist of the Romantic music, Romantic era. His best-known works include Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso (1863), the Piano C ...
and
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky , group=n ( ; 7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer of the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music would make a lasting impression internationally. He wrote some of the most popu ...
.
Wagner was far from satisfied with the Festival; Cosima recorded that months later, his attitude towards the productions was "Never again, never again!" Moreover, the festival finished with a deficit of about 150,000 marks. The expenses of Bayreuth and of Wahnfried meant that Wagner still sought further sources of income by conducting or taking on commissions such as the ''Centennial March'' for America, for which he received $5000.
Last years (1876–1883)
Following the first Bayreuth Festival, Wagner began work on ''
Parsifal
''Parsifal'' ( WWV 111) is an opera or a music drama in three acts by the German composer Richard Wagner and his last composition. Wagner's own libretto for the work is loosely based on the 13th-century Middle High German epic poem ''Parzival'' ...
'', his final opera. The composition took four years, much of which Wagner spent in Italy for health reasons. From 1876 to 1878 Wagner also embarked on the last of his documented emotional liaisons, this time with
Judith Gautier
Judith Gautier (25 August 1845, Paris – 26 December 1917) was a French poet, translator and historical novelist, the daughter of Théophile Gautier and Ernesta Grisi, sister of the noted singer and ballet dancer Carlotta Grisi.
She was mar ...
, whom he had met at the 1876 Festival. Wagner was also much troubled by problems of financing ''Parsifal'', and by the prospect of the work being performed by other theatres than Bayreuth. He was once again assisted by the liberality of King Ludwig, but was still forced by his personal financial situation in 1877 to sell the rights of several of his unpublished works (including the ''Siegfried Idyll'') to the publisher
Schott.
![WahnfriedBayreuth11](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/WahnfriedBayreuth11.JPG)
Wagner wrote several articles in his later years, often on political topics, and often
reactionary
In political science, a reactionary or a reactionist is a person who holds political views that favor a return to the ''status quo ante'', the previous political state of society, which that person believes possessed positive characteristics abse ...
in tone, repudiating some of his earlier, more liberal, views. These include "Religion and Art" (1880) and "Heroism and Christianity" (1881), which were printed in the journal ''
Bayreuther Blätter
''Bayreuther Blätter'' (''Bayreuth pages'') was a monthly journal founded in by Richard Wagner 1878 and edited by Hans von Wolzogen until his death in 1938. It was written primarily for visitors to the Bayreuth Festival.
The newsletter carried ...
'', published by his supporter
Hans von Wolzogen
Baron Hans Paul von Wolzogen (13 November 1848 in Potsdam – 2 June 1938 in Bayreuth), was a German man of letters, editor and publisher. He is best known for his connection with Richard Wagner.
Childhood
Wolzogen's father, Alfred von Wolzoge ...
. Wagner's sudden interest in Christianity at this period, which infuses ''Parsifal'', was contemporary with his increasing alignment with
German nationalism
German nationalism () is an ideological notion that promotes the unity of Germans and German-speakers into one unified nation state. German nationalism also emphasizes and takes pride in the patriotism and national identity of Germans as one na ...
, and required on his part, and the part of his associates, "the rewriting of some recent Wagnerian history", so as to represent, for example, the ''Ring'' as a work reflecting Christian ideals. Many of these later articles, including "What is German?" (1878, but based on a draft written in the 1860s), repeated Wagner's antisemitic preoccupations.
Wagner completed ''Parsifal'' in January 1882, and a second Bayreuth Festival was held for the new opera, which premiered on 26 May. Wagner was by this time extremely ill, having suffered a series of increasingly severe
angina
Angina, also known as angina pectoris, is chest pain or pressure, usually caused by ischemia, insufficient blood flow to the Cardiac muscle, heart muscle (myocardium). It is most commonly a symptom of coronary artery disease.
Angina is typical ...
attacks. During the sixteenth and final performance of ''Parsifal'' on 29 August, he entered the pit unseen during act 3, took the baton from conductor
Hermann Levi
Hermann Levi (7 November 1839 – 13 May 1900) was a German Jewish orchestral conductor.
Levi was born in Giessen, Germany, the son of a rabbi. He was educated at Giessen and Mannheim, and came to Vinzenz Lachner's notice. From 1855 to 1858 ...
, and led the performance to its conclusion.
After the festival, the Wagner family journeyed to Venice for the winter. Wagner died of a heart attack at the age of 69 on 13 February 1883 at
Ca' Vendramin Calergi
Ca' Loredan Vendramin Calergi is a 15th-century palace on the Grand Canal (Venice), Grand Canal in the ''sestiere'' (quarter) of Cannaregio in Venice, northern Italy. It was commissioned by the patrician House of Loredan, Loredan dynasty, namely ...
, a 16th-century
palazzo
A palace is a grand residence, especially a royal residence, or the home of a head of state or some other high-ranking dignitary, such as a bishop or archbishop. The word is derived from the Latin name palātium, for Palatine Hill in Rome which ...
on the
Grand Canal. The legend that the attack was prompted by argument with Cosima over Wagner's supposedly amorous interest in the singer
Carrie Pringle
Carrie Pringle (Caroline Mary Isabelle Pringle; 19 March 1859 – 12 November 1930) was an Austrian-born British soprano singer. She performed the role of one of the Flowermaidens in the 1882 premiere of Richard Wagner's ''Parsifal'' at the Bayr ...
, who had been a Flower-maiden in ''Parsifal'' at Bayreuth, is without credible evidence. After a funerary
gondola
The gondola (, ; vec, góndoła ) is a traditional, flat-bottomed Venetian rowing boat, well suited to the conditions of the Venetian lagoon. It is typically propelled by a gondolier, who uses a rowing oar, which is not fastened to the hull ...
bore Wagner's remains over the Grand Canal, his body was taken to Germany where it was buried in the garden of the Villa Wahnfried in Bayreuth.
Works
Wagner's musical output is listed by the ''Wagner-Werk-Verzeichnis'' (WWV) as comprising 113 works, including fragments and projects. The first complete scholarly edition of his musical works in print was commenced in 1970 under the aegis of the
Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts Bavarian is the adjective form of the German state of Bavaria, and refers to people of ancestry from Bavaria.
Bavarian may also refer to:
* Bavarii, a Germanic tribe
* Bavarians, a nation and ethnographic group of Germans
* Bavarian, Iran, a vill ...
and the
Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur
The Academy of Sciences and Literature (german: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz, AdW Mainz) is a scientific academy in Mainz, Germany. It was established in 1949 on an initiative of Alfred Döblin. The academy's goal is to s ...
of
Mainz
Mainz () is the capital and largest city of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
Mainz is on the left bank of the Rhine, opposite to the place that the Main (river), Main joins the Rhine. Downstream of the confluence, the Rhine flows to the north-we ...
, and is presently under the editorship of
Egon Voss
Egon Voss (born 7 November 1938) is a German musicologist, who is particularly known for his contributions to Richard Wagner research.
Life and career
Born in Magdeburg, Voss studied musicology and German studies at the Universities in Detmold, ...
. It will consist of 21 volumes (57 books) of music and 10 volumes (13 books) of relevant documents and texts. As at October 2017, three volumes remain to be published. The publisher is
Schott Music
Schott Music () is one of the oldest German music publishers. It is also one of the largest music publishing houses in Europe, and is the second oldest music publisher after Breitkopf & Härtel. The company headquarters of Schott Music were fou ...
.
Operas
![Siegfried leitmotif](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/Siegfried_leitmotif.jpg)
Wagner's operatic works are his primary artistic legacy. Unlike most opera composers, who generally left the task of writing the
libretto
A libretto (Italian for "booklet") is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or Musical theatre, musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the t ...
(the text and lyrics) to others, Wagner wrote his own libretti, which he referred to as "poems".
From 1849 onwards, he urged a new concept of opera often referred to as "music drama" (although he later rejected this term), in which all musical, poetic and dramatic elements were to be fused together—the ''
Gesamtkunstwerk
A ''Gesamtkunstwerk'' (, literally 'total artwork', translated as 'total work of art', 'ideal work of art', 'universal artwork', 'synthesis of the arts', 'comprehensive artwork', or 'all-embracing art form') is a work of art that makes use of al ...
''. Wagner developed a compositional style in which the importance of the orchestra is equal to that of the singers. The orchestra's dramatic role in the later operas includes the use of
leitmotif
A leitmotif or leitmotiv () is a "short, recurring musical phrase" associated with a particular person, place, or idea. It is closely related to the musical concepts of ''idée fixe'' or ''motto-theme''. The spelling ''leitmotif'' is an anglici ...
s, musical phrases that can be interpreted as announcing specific characters, locales, and plot elements; their complex interweaving and evolution illuminates the progression of the drama. These operas are still, despite Wagner's reservations, referred to by many writers as "music dramas".
Early works (to 1842)
Wagner's earliest attempts at opera were often uncompleted. Abandoned works include
a pastoral opera based on
Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as treat ...
's ''Die Laune des Verliebten'' (''The Infatuated Lover's Caprice''), written at the age of 17, ''
Die Hochzeit
''Die Hochzeit'' (''The Wedding'', WWV 31) is an unfinished opera by Richard Wagner which predates his completed works in the genre. Wagner completed the libretto, then started composing the music in the second half of 1832 when he was just ninete ...
'' (''The Wedding''), on which Wagner worked in 1832, and the
singspiel
A Singspiel (; plural: ; ) is a form of German-language music drama, now regarded as a genre of opera. It is characterized by spoken dialogue, which is alternated with ensembles, songs, ballads, and arias which were often strophic, or folk-like ...
''
Männerlist größer als Frauenlist'' (''Men are More Cunning than Women'', 1837–1838). ''
Die Feen
''Die Feen'' (, ''The Fairies'') is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. The German libretto was written by the composer after Carlo Gozzi's ''La donna serpente''. ''Die Feen'' was Wagner's first completed opera, but remained unperformed in h ...
'' (''The Fairies'', 1833) was not performed in the composer's lifetime and ''
Das Liebesverbot
' (''The Ban on Love'', WWV 38), is an early comic opera in two acts by Richard Wagner, with the libretto written by the composer after Shakespeare's '' Measure for Measure''. Described as a ', it was composed in early 1836.
Restrained sexual ...
'' (''The Ban on Love'', 1836) was withdrawn after its first performance. ''
Rienzi
' (''Rienzi, the last of the tribunes''; WWV 49) is an early opera by Richard Wagner in five acts, with the libretto written by the composer after Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel of the same name (1835). The title is commonly shortened to ''Rienzi ...
'' (1842) was Wagner's first opera to be successfully staged. The compositional style of these early works was conventional—the relatively more sophisticated ''Rienzi'' showing the clear influence of
Grand Opera
Grand opera is a genre of 19th-century opera generally in four or five acts, characterized by large-scale casts and orchestras, and (in their original productions) lavish and spectacular design and stage effects, normally with plots based on o ...
''à la'' Spontini and Meyerbeer—and did not exhibit the innovations that would mark Wagner's place in musical history. Later in life, Wagner said that he did not consider these works to be part of his
''oeuvre''; and they have been performed only rarely in the last hundred years, although the overture to ''Rienzi'' is an occasional concert-hall piece. ''Die Feen'', ''Das Liebesverbot'', and ''Rienzi'' were performed at both Leipzig and Bayreuth in 2013 to mark the composer's bicentenary.
"Romantic operas" (1843–1851)
![Der fliegende Holländer](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Der_fliegende_Holl%C3%A4nder.jpg)
Wagner's middle stage output began with ''
Der fliegende Holländer
' (''The Flying Dutchman''), WWV 63, is a German-language opera, with libretto and music by Richard Wagner. The central theme is redemption through love. Wagner conducted the premiere at the Königliches Hoftheater Dresden in 1843.
Wagner claim ...
'' (''The Flying Dutchman'', 1843), followed by ''
Tannhäuser
Tannhäuser (; gmh, Tanhûser), often stylized, "The Tannhäuser," was a German Minnesinger and traveling poet. Historically, his biography, including the dates he lived, is obscure beyond the poetry, which suggests he lived between 1245 and ...
'' (1845) and ''
Lohengrin
Lohengrin () is a character in German Arthurian literature. The son of Parzival (Percival), he is a knight of the Holy Grail sent in a boat pulled by swans to rescue a maiden who can never ask his identity. His story, which first appears in Wolf ...
'' (1850). These three operas are sometimes referred to as Wagner's "romantic operas". They reinforced the reputation, among the public in Germany and beyond, that Wagner had begun to establish with ''Rienzi''. Although distancing himself from the style of these operas from 1849 onwards, he nevertheless reworked both ''Der fliegende Holländer'' and ''Tannhäuser'' on several occasions. These three operas are considered to represent a significant developmental stage in Wagner's musical and operatic maturity as regards thematic handling, portrayal of emotions and orchestration. They are the earliest works included in the
Bayreuth canon
The Bayreuth canon consists of those operas by the German composer Richard Wagner (1813–1883) that have been performed at the Bayreuth Festival. The festival, which is dedicated to the staging of these works, was founded by Wagner in 1876 in the ...
, the mature operas that Cosima staged at the Bayreuth Festival after Wagner's death in accordance with his wishes. All three (including the differing versions of ''Der fliegende Holländer'' and ''Tannhäuser'') continue to be regularly performed throughout the world, and have been frequently recorded. They were also the operas by which his fame spread during his lifetime.
"Music dramas" (1851–1882)
= Starting the ''Ring''
=
![Ring22](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Ring22.jpg)
Wagner's late dramas are considered his masterpieces. ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'', commonly referred to as the ''Ring'' or "''Ring'' cycle", is a set of four operas based loosely on figures and elements of
Germanic mythology
Germanic mythology consists of the body of myths native to the Germanic peoples, including Norse mythology, Anglo-Saxon mythology, and Continental Germanic mythology. It was a key element of Germanic paganism.
Origins
As the Germanic language ...
—particularly from the later
Norse mythology
Norse, Nordic, or Scandinavian mythology is the body of myths belonging to the North Germanic peoples, stemming from Old Norse religion and continuing after the Christianization of Scandinavia, and into the Nordic folklore of the modern period ...
—notably the
Old Norse
Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and t ...
''
Poetic Edda
The ''Poetic Edda'' is the modern name for an untitled collection of Old Norse anonymous narrative poems, which is distinct from the ''Prose Edda'' written by Snorri Sturluson. Several versions exist, all primarily of text from the Icelandic me ...
'' and ''
Volsunga Saga'', and the
Middle High German
Middle High German (MHG; german: Mittelhochdeutsch (Mhd.)) is the term for the form of German spoken in the High Middle Ages. It is conventionally dated between 1050 and 1350, developing from Old High German and into Early New High German. High ...
''
Nibelungenlied
The ( gmh, Der Nibelunge liet or ), translated as ''The Song of the Nibelungs'', is an epic poetry, epic poem written around 1200 in Middle High German. Its anonymous poet was likely from the region of Passau. The is based on an oral tradition ...
''. Wagner specifically developed the libretti for these operas according to his interpretation of ''
Stabreim
In prosody, alliterative verse is a form of verse that uses alliteration as the principal ornamental device to help indicate the underlying metrical structure, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme. The most commonly studied traditions of ...
'', highly alliterative rhyming verse-pairs used in old Germanic poetry. They were also influenced by Wagner's concepts of
ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...
drama, in which
tetralogies were a component of
Athenian festivals
The festival calendar of Classical Athens involved the staging of many festivals each year. This includes festivals held in honor of Athena, Dionysus, Apollo, Artemis, Demeter, Persephone, Hermes, and Herakles. Other Athenian festivals were bas ...
, and which he had amply discussed in his essay "
Oper und Drama".
The first two components of the ''Ring'' cycle were ''
Das Rheingold
''Das Rheingold'' (; ''The Rhinegold''), WWV 86A, is the first of the four music dramas that constitute Richard Wagner's ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' (English: ''The Ring of the Nibelung''). It was performed, as a single opera, at the National ...
'' (''The Rhinegold''), which was completed in 1854, and ''
Die Walküre
(; ''The Valkyrie''), WWV 86B, is the second of the four music dramas that constitute Richard Wagner's ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' (English: ''The Ring of the Nibelung''). It was performed, as a single opera, at the National Theatre Munich on ...
'' (''The
Valkyrie
In Norse mythology, a valkyrie ("chooser of the slain") is one of a host of female figures who guide souls of the dead to the god Odin's hall Valhalla. There, the deceased warriors become (Old Norse "single (or once) fighters"Orchard (1997:36) ...
''), which was finished in 1856. In ''Das Rheingold'', with its "relentlessly talky 'realism'
ndthe absence of lyrical '
numbers
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...
, Wagner came very close to the musical ideals of his 1849–1851 essays. ''Die Walküre'', which contains what is virtually a traditional
aria
In music, an aria (Italian: ; plural: ''arie'' , or ''arias'' in common usage, diminutive form arietta , plural ariette, or in English simply air) is a self-contained piece for one voice, with or without instrumental or orchestral accompanime ...
(Siegmund's ''Winterstürme'' in the first act), and the quasi-
choral
A choir ( ; also known as a chorale or chorus) is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which ...
appearance of the Valkyries themselves, shows more "operatic" traits, but has been assessed by Barry Millington as "the music drama that most satisfactorily embodies the theoretical principles of 'Oper und Drama'... A thoroughgoing synthesis of poetry and music is achieved without any notable sacrifice in musical expression."
= ''Tristan und Isolde'' and ''Die Meistersinger''
=
While composing the opera ''
Siegfried
Siegfried is a German-language male given name, composed from the Germanic elements ''sig'' "victory" and ''frithu'' "protection, peace".
The German name has the Old Norse cognate ''Sigfriðr, Sigfrøðr'', which gives rise to Swedish ''Sigfrid' ...
'', the third part of the ''Ring'' cycle, Wagner interrupted work on it and between 1857 and 1864 wrote the tragic love story ''
Tristan und Isolde
''Tristan und Isolde'' (''Tristan and Isolde''), WWV 90, is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the 12th-century romance Tristan and Iseult by Gottfried von Strassburg. It was compose ...
'' and his only mature comedy ''
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
(; "The Master-Singers of Nuremberg"), WWV 96, is a music drama, or opera, in three acts, by Richard Wagner. It is the longest opera commonly performed, taking nearly four and a half hours, not counting two breaks between acts, and is traditio ...
'' (''The Mastersingers of Nuremberg''), two works that are also part of the regular operatic canon.
![Betz Franz](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Betz_Franz.png)
''Tristan'' is often granted a special place in musical history; many see it as the beginning of the move away from conventional
harmony
In music, harmony is the process by which individual sounds are joined together or composed into whole units or compositions. Often, the term harmony refers to simultaneously occurring frequencies, pitches ( tones, notes), or chords. However ...
and
tonality
Tonality is the arrangement of pitches and/or chords of a musical work in a hierarchy of perceived relations, stabilities, attractions and directionality. In this hierarchy, the single pitch or triadic chord with the greatest stability is call ...
and consider that it lays the groundwork for the direction of classical music in the 20th century. Wagner felt that his musico-dramatical theories were most perfectly realised in this work with its use of "the art of transition" between dramatic elements and the balance achieved between vocal and orchestral lines. Completed in 1859, the work was given its first performance in Munich, conducted by Bülow, in June 1865.
''Die Meistersinger'' was originally conceived by Wagner in 1845 as a sort of comic pendant to ''Tannhäuser''. Like ''Tristan'', it was premiered in Munich under the baton of Bülow, on 21 June 1868, and became an immediate success. Millington describes ''Meistersinger'' as "a rich, perceptive music drama widely admired for its warm humanity", but its strong German
nationalist
Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: The ...
overtones have led some to cite it as an example of Wagner's reactionary politics and antisemitism.
= Completing the ''Ring''
=
When Wagner returned to writing the music for the last act of ''Siegfried'' and for ''
Götterdämmerung
' (; ''Twilight of the Gods''), WWV 86D, is the last in Richard Wagner's cycle of four music dramas titled (''The Ring of the Nibelung'', or ''The Ring Cycle'' or ''The Ring'' for short). It received its premiere at the on 17 August 1876, as p ...
'' (''Twilight of the Gods''), as the final part of the ''Ring'', his style had changed once more to something more recognisable as "operatic" than the aural world of ''Rheingold'' and ''Walküre'', though it was still thoroughly stamped with his own originality as a composer and suffused with leitmotifs. This was in part because the libretti of the four ''Ring'' operas had been written in reverse order, so that the book for ''Götterdämmerung'' was conceived more "traditionally" than that of ''Rheingold''; still, the self-imposed strictures of the ''Gesamtkunstwerk'' had become relaxed. The differences also result from Wagner's development as a composer during the period in which he wrote ''Tristan'', ''Meistersinger'' and the Paris version of ''Tannhäuser''. From act 3 of ''Siegfried'' onwards, the ''Ring'' becomes more
chromatic
Diatonic and chromatic are terms in music theory that are most often used to characterize scales, and are also applied to musical instruments, intervals, chords, notes, musical styles, and kinds of harmony. They are very often used as a pair, ...
melodically, more complex harmonically and more developmental in its treatment of leitmotifs.
Wagner took 26 years from writing the first draft of a libretto in 1848 until he completed ''Götterdämmerung'' in 1874. The ''Ring'' takes about 15 hours to perform and is the only undertaking of such size to be regularly presented on the world's stages.
= ''Parsifal''
=
Wagner's final opera, ''
Parsifal
''Parsifal'' ( WWV 111) is an opera or a music drama in three acts by the German composer Richard Wagner and his last composition. Wagner's own libretto for the work is loosely based on the 13th-century Middle High German epic poem ''Parzival'' ...
'' (1882), which was his only work written especially for his Bayreuth Festspielhaus and which is described in the score as a "''Bühnenweihfestspiel''" ("festival play for the consecration of the stage"), has a storyline suggested by elements of the legend of the
Holy Grail
The Holy Grail (french: Saint Graal, br, Graal Santel, cy, Greal Sanctaidd, kw, Gral) is a treasure that serves as an important motif in Arthurian literature. Various traditions describe the Holy Grail as a cup, dish, or stone with miracul ...
. It also carries elements of
Buddhist
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...
renunciation suggested by Wagner's readings of Schopenhauer. Wagner described it to Cosima as his "last card". It remains controversial because of its treatment of Christianity, its eroticism, and its expression, as perceived by some commentators, of German nationalism and antisemitism. Despite the composer's own description of the opera to King Ludwig as "this most Christian of works", Ulrike Kienzle has commented that "Wagner's turn to Christian mythology, upon which the imagery and spiritual contents of ''Parsifal'' rest, is idiosyncratic and contradicts Christian
dogma
Dogma is a belief or set of beliefs that is accepted by the members of a group without being questioned or doubted. It may be in the form of an official system of principles or doctrines of a religion, such as Roman Catholicism, Judaism, Islam ...
in many ways." Musically the opera has been held to represent a continuing development of the composer's style, and Millington describes it as "a diaphanous score of unearthly beauty and refinement".
Non-operatic music
![Gill Wagner](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Gill_Wagner.jpg)
Apart from his operas, Wagner composed relatively few pieces of music. These include a
symphony in C major (written at the age of 19), the ''
Faust Overture
The ''Faust Overture'' is a concert overture by German composer Richard Wagner. Wagner originally composed it between 1839 and 1840, intending it to be the first movement of a ''Faust Symphony'' based on the play ''Faust'' by German playwright Jo ...
'' (the only completed part of an intended symphony on the subject), some
concert overture
Overture (from French ''ouverture'', "opening") in music was originally the instrumental introduction to a ballet, opera, or oratorio in the 17th century. During the early Romantic era, composers such as Beethoven and Mendelssohn composed overt ...
s, and choral and piano pieces. His most commonly performed work that is not an extract from an opera is the ''
Siegfried Idyll
The ', WWV 103, by Richard Wagner is a symphonic poem for chamber orchestra.
Background
Wagner composed the ''Siegfried Idyll'' as a birthday present to his second wife, Cosima, after the birth of their son Siegfried in 1869. It was first perf ...
'' for chamber orchestra, which has several motifs in common with the ''Ring'' cycle. The ''
Wesendonck Lieder
, Wagner-Werk-Verzeichnis, WWV 91, is the common name of a set of five songs for female voice and piano by Richard Wagner, (''Five Poems for a Female Voice''). He set five poems by Mathilde Wesendonck while he was working on his opera ''Tristan u ...
'' are also often performed, either in the original piano version, or with orchestral accompaniment. More rarely performed are the ''American Centennial March'' (1876), and ''
Das Liebesmahl der Apostel'' (''The Love Feast of the Apostles''), a piece for male choruses and orchestra composed in 1843 for the city of Dresden.
After completing ''Parsifal'', Wagner expressed his intention to turn to the writing of symphonies, and several sketches dating from the late 1870s and early 1880s have been identified as work towards this end. The overtures and certain orchestral passages from Wagner's middle and late-stage operas are commonly played as concert pieces. For most of these, Wagner wrote or rewrote short passages to ensure musical coherence. The "
Bridal Chorus
The "Bridal Chorus" () from the 1850 opera
Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a col ...
" from ''Lohengrin'' is frequently played as the bride's processional
wedding march
Music is often played at wedding celebrations, including during the ceremony and at festivities before or after the event. The music can be performed live by instrumentalists or vocalists or may use pre-recorded songs, depending on the format o ...
in English-speaking countries.
Prose writings
Wagner was an extremely prolific writer, authoring many books, poems, and articles, as well as voluminous correspondence. His writings covered a wide range of topics, including autobiography, politics, philosophy, and detailed analyses of his own operas.
Wagner planned for a collected edition of his publications as early as 1865; he believed that such an edition would help the world understand his intellectual development and artistic aims. The first such edition was published between 1871 and 1883, but was doctored to suppress or alter articles that were an embarrassment to him (e.g. those praising Meyerbeer), or by altering dates on some articles to reinforce Wagner's own account of his progress. Wagner's autobiography ''Mein Leben'' was originally published for close friends only in a very small edition (15–18 copies per volume) in four volumes between 1870 and 1880. The first public edition (with many passages suppressed by Cosima) appeared in 1911; the first attempt at a full edition (in German) appeared in 1963.
There have been modern complete or partial editions of Wagner's writings, including a centennial edition in German edited by
Dieter Borchmeyer
Dieter Borchmeyer (born 3 May 1941 in Recklinghausen) is a German literary critic.
Borchmeyer is Professor Emeritus of Modern German Literature (''Neuere Deutsche Literatur'') and Dramatic Theory (''Theaterwissenschaft'') at the University of H ...
(which, however, omitted the essay "
Das Judenthum in der Musik" and ''Mein Leben''). The English translations of Wagner's prose in eight volumes by
William Ashton Ellis
William Ashton Ellis (20 August 1852 – 2 January 1919) was an English doctor and theosophist. He is remembered for translating the complete prose works of Richard Wagner.
Life
Born in London, the son of the surgeon Robert Ellis (1823–1877) ...
(1892–1899) are still in print and commonly used, despite their deficiencies. The first complete historical and critical edition of Wagner's prose works was launched in 2013 at the Institute for Music Research at the
University of Würzburg
The Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg (also referred to as the University of Würzburg, in German ''Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg'') is a public research university in Würzburg, Germany. The University of Würzburg is one of ...
; this will result in at least eight volumes of text and several volumes of commentary, totalling over 5,000 pages. It was originally anticipated that the project will be completed by 2030.
A complete edition of Wagner's correspondence, estimated to amount to between 10,000 and 12,000 items, is under way under the supervision of the University of Würzburg. As of January 2021, 25 volumes have appeared, covering the period to 1873.
Influence and legacy
Influence on music
Wagner's later musical style introduced new ideas in harmony, melodic process (leitmotif) and operatic structure. Notably from ''Tristan und Isolde'' onwards, he explored the limits of the traditional tonal system, which gave keys and chords their identity, pointing the way to
atonality
Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. ''Atonality'', in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a s ...
in the 20th century. Some music historians date the beginning of
modern classical music to the first notes of ''Tristan'', which include the so-called
Tristan chord
The Tristan chord is a chord made up of the notes F, B, D, and G:
:
More generally, it can be any chord that consists of these same intervals: augmented fourth, augmented sixth, and augmented ninth above a bass note. It is so named as it is h ...
.
![Photo of Gustav Mahler by Moritz Nähr 01](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Photo_of_Gustav_Mahler_by_Moritz_N%C3%A4hr_01.jpg)
Wagner inspired great devotion. For a long period, many composers were inclined to align themselves with or against Wagner's music.
Anton Bruckner
Josef Anton Bruckner (; 4 September 182411 October 1896) was an Austrian composer, organist, and music theorist best known for his symphonies, masses, Te Deum and motets. The first are considered emblematic of the final stage of Austro-Germ ...
and
Hugo Wolf
Hugo Philipp Jacob Wolf (13 March 1860 – 22 February 1903) was an Austrian composer of Slovene origin, particularly noted for his art songs, or Lieder. He brought to this form a concentrated expressive intensity which was unique in late Ro ...
were greatly indebted to him, as were
César Franck
César-Auguste Jean-Guillaume Hubert Franck (; 10 December 1822 – 8 November 1890) was a French Romantic composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher born in modern-day Belgium.
He was born in Liège (which at the time of his birth was p ...
,
Henri Duparc,
Ernest Chausson
Amédée-Ernest Chausson (; 20 January 1855 – 10 June 1899) was a French Romantic composer who died just as his career was beginning to flourish.
Life
Born in Paris into an affluent bourgeois family, Chausson was the sole surviving child of a ...
,
Jules Massenet
Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet (; 12 May 1842 – 13 August 1912) was a French composer of the Romantic era best known for his operas, of which he wrote more than thirty. The two most frequently staged are '' Manon'' (1884) and ''Werther' ...
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Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss (; 11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a German composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wag ...
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Alexander von Zemlinsky
Alexander Zemlinsky or Alexander von Zemlinsky (14 October 1871 – 15 March 1942) was an Austrian composer, conductor, and teacher.
Biography
Early life
Zemlinsky was born in Vienna to a highly diverse family. Zemlinsky's grandfather, Anton S ...
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Hans Pfitzner
Hans Erich Pfitzner (5 May 1869 – 22 May 1949) was a German composer, conductor and polemicist who was a self-described anti-modernist. His best known work is the post-Romantic opera ''Palestrina'' (1917), loosely based on the life of the s ...
and many others.
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler (; 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism ...
was devoted to Wagner and his music; aged 15, he sought him out on his 1875 visit to Vienna, became a renowned Wagner conductor, and his compositions were seen by
Richard Taruskin
Richard Filler Taruskin (April 2, 1945 – July 1, 2022) was an American musicologist and music critic who was among the leading and most prominent music historians of his generation. The breadth of his scrutiny into source material as well as ...
as extending Wagner's "maximalization" of "the temporal and the sonorous" in music to the world of the symphony. The harmonic revolutions of Claude Debussy and Arnold Schoenberg (both of whose ''oeuvres'' contain examples of tonal and atonality, atonal modernism) have often been traced back to ''Tristan'' and ''Parsifal''. The Italian form of operatic Realism (theatre), realism known as verismo owed much to the Wagnerian concept of musical form.
Wagner made a major contribution to the principles and practice of conducting. His essay "About Conducting" (1869) advanced Hector Berlioz's technique of conducting and claimed that conducting was a means by which a musical work could be re-interpreted, rather than simply a mechanism for achieving orchestral unison. He exemplified this approach in his own conducting, which was significantly more flexible than the disciplined approach of Felix Mendelssohn; in his view this also justified practices that would today be frowned upon, such as the rewriting of scores. Wilhelm Furtwängler felt that Wagner and Bülow, through their interpretative approach, inspired a whole new generation of conductors (including Furtwängler himself).
Among those claiming inspiration from Wagner's music are the German band Rammstein, Jim Steinman, who wrote songs for Meat Loaf, Bonnie Tyler, Air Supply, Celine Dion and others, and the electronic composer Klaus Schulze, whose 1975 album ''Timewind'' consists of two 30-minute tracks, ''Bayreuth Return'' and ''Wahnfried 1883''. Joey DeMaio of the band Manowar has described Wagner as "The father of heavy metal music, heavy metal". The Slovenian group Laibach (band), Laibach created the 2009 suite ''VolksWagner'', using material from Wagner's operas. Phil Spector's Wall of Sound recording technique was, it has been claimed, heavily influenced by Wagner.
Influence on literature, philosophy and the visual arts
![Nietzsche1882](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Nietzsche1882.jpg)
Wagner's influence on literature and philosophy is significant. Millington has commented:
[Wagner's] protean abundance meant that he could inspire the use of literary motif in many a novel employing interior monologue; ... the symbolism (arts), Symbolists saw him as a mystic hierophant; the Decadent movement, Decadents found many a frisson in his work.
Friedrich Nietzsche was a member of Wagner's inner circle during the early 1870s, and his first published work, ''The Birth of Tragedy'', proposed Wagner's music as the Dionysian "rebirth" of European culture in opposition to Apollonian and Dionysian, Apollonian rationalist "decadence". Nietzsche broke with Wagner following the first Bayreuth Festival, believing that Wagner's final phase represented a pandering to Christian pieties and a surrender to the new German Empire, German Reich. Nietzsche expressed his displeasure with the later Wagner in "The Case of Wagner" and "Nietzsche contra Wagner".
The poets
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poetry, French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist and art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticis ...
, Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine worshipped Wagner. Édouard Dujardin, whose influential novel ''Les Lauriers sont coupés'' is in the form of an interior monologue inspired by Wagnerian music, founded a journal dedicated to Wagner, ''La Revue Wagnérienne'', to which J. K. Huysmans and Téodor de Wyzewa contributed. In a list of major cultural figures influenced by Wagner, Bryan Magee includes D. H. Lawrence, Aubrey Beardsley, Romain Rolland, Gérard de Nerval, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Rainer Maria Rilke and several others.
In the 20th century, W. H. Auden once called Wagner "perhaps the greatest genius that ever lived", while Thomas Mann and Marcel Proust were heavily influenced by him and discussed Wagner in their novels. He is also discussed in some of the works of James Joyce, as well as W. E. B. Du Bois, who featured ''Lohengrin'' in ''The Souls of Black Folk''. Wagnerian themes inhabit T. S. Eliot's ''The Waste Land'', which contains lines from ''Tristan und Isolde'' and ''Götterdämmerung'', and Verlaine's poem on ''Parsifal''.
Many of Wagner's concepts, including his speculation about dreams, predated their investigation by Sigmund Freud. Wagner had publicly analysed the Oedipus myth before Freud was born in terms of its psychological significance, insisting that incestuous desires are natural and normal, and perceptively exhibiting the relationship between sexuality and anxiety. Georg Groddeck considered the ''Ring'' as the first manual of psychoanalysis.
Influence on cinema
Wagner's concept of the use of leitmotifs and the integrated musical expression which they can enable has influenced many 20th and 21st century film scores. The critic Theodor Adorno has noted that the Wagnerian leitmotif "leads directly to film music, cinema music where the sole function of the leitmotif is to announce heroes or situations so as to allow the audience to orient itself more easily". Film scores citing Wagnerian themes include Francis Ford Coppola's ''Apocalypse Now'', which features a version of the ''Ride of the Valkyries'', Trevor Jones (composer), Trevor Jones's soundtrack to John Boorman's film Excalibur (film), ''Excalibur'', and the 2011 films ''A Dangerous Method'' (dir. David Cronenberg) and ''Melancholia (2011 film), Melancholia'' (dir. Lars von Trier). Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's 1977 film ''Hitler: A Film from Germany''s visual style and set design are strongly inspired by ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'', musical excerpts from which are frequently used in the film's soundtrack.
Opponents and supporters
![Hanslick](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Hanslick.jpg)
Not all reaction to Wagner was positive. For a time, German musical life divided into two factions, supporters of Wagner and supporters of Johannes Brahms; the latter, with the support of the powerful critic Eduard Hanslick (of whom Beckmesser in ''Meistersinger'' is in part a caricature) championed traditional forms and led the conservative front against Wagnerian innovations. They were supported by the conservative leanings of some German music schools, including the Music school, conservatories at University of Music and Theatre Leipzig, Leipzig under Ignaz Moscheles and at Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln, Cologne under the direction of Ferdinand Hiller. Another Wagner detractor was the French composer Charles-Valentin Alkan, who wrote to Hiller after attending Wagner's Paris concert on 25 January 1860 at which Wagner conducted the overtures to ''Der fliegende Holländer'' and ''Tannhäuser'', the preludes to ''Lohengrin'' and ''Tristan und Isolde'', and six other extracts from ''Tannhäuser'' and ''Lohengrin'': "I had imagined that I was going to meet music of an innovative kind but was astonished to find a pale imitation of Berlioz ... I do not like all the music of Berlioz while appreciating his marvellous understanding of certain instrumental effects ... but here he was imitated and caricatured ... Wagner is not a musician, he is a disease."
Even those who, like Debussy, opposed Wagner ("this old poisoner") could not deny his influence. Indeed, Debussy was one of many composers, including Tchaikovsky, who felt the need to break with Wagner precisely because his influence was so unmistakable and overwhelming. "Golliwogg's Cakewalk" from Debussy's ''Children's Corner'' piano suite contains a deliberately tongue-in-cheek quotation from the opening bars of ''Tristan''. Others who proved resistant to Wagner's operas included Gioachino Rossini, who said "Wagner has wonderful moments, and dreadful quarters of an hour." In the 20th century Wagner's music was parodied by Paul Hindemith and Hanns Eisler, among others.
Wagner's followers (known as Wagnerians or Wagnerites) have formed many societies dedicated to Wagner's life and work.
Film and stage portrayals
Wagner has been the subject of many biographical films. The earliest was a silent film made by Carl Froelich in 1913 and featured in the title role the composer Giuseppe Becce, who also wrote the score for the film (as Wagner's music, still in copyright, was not available). Other film portrayals of Wagner include: Alan Badel in ''Magic Fire'' (1955); Lyndon Brook in ''Song Without End'' (1960); Trevor Howard in ''Ludwig (film), Ludwig'' (1972); Paul Nicholas in ''Lisztomania (film), Lisztomania'' (1975); and Richard Burton in ''Wagner (film), Wagner'' (1983).
Jonathan Harvey (composer), Jonathan Harvey's opera ''Wagner Dream'' (2007) intertwines the events surrounding Wagner's death with the story of Wagner's uncompleted opera outline ''Die Sieger (The Victors)''.
Bayreuth Festival
Since Wagner's death, the Bayreuth Festival, which has become an annual event, has been successively directed by his widow, his son Siegfried, the latter's widow Winifred Wagner, their two sons Wieland Wagner, Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner, and, presently, two of the composer's great-granddaughters, Eva Wagner-Pasquier and Katharina Wagner. Since 1973, the festival has been overseen by the Richard Wagner Foundation, Richard-Wagner-Stiftung (Richard Wagner Foundation), the members of which include some of Wagner's descendants.
Controversies
Wagner's operas, writings, politics, beliefs and unorthodox lifestyle made him a controversial figure during his lifetime. Following his death, debate about his ideas and their interpretation, particularly in Germany during the 20th century, has continued.
Racism and antisemitism
![Wagnerclic](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Wagnerclic.jpg)
Wagner's hostile writings on Jews, including Das Judenthum in der Musik, ''Jewishness in Music'', correspond to some existing trends of thought in Germany during the 19th century. Despite his very public views on this topic, throughout his life Wagner had Jewish friends, colleagues and supporters. There have been frequent suggestions that antisemitic stereotypes are represented in Wagner's operas. The characters of Alberich and Mime in the ''Ring'', Sixtus Beckmesser in ''Die Meistersinger,'' and Klingsor in ''Parsifal'' are sometimes claimed as Jewish representations, though they are not identified as such in the librettos of these operas. The topic is further complicated by claims, which may have been credited by Wagner, that he himself was of Jewish ancestry, via his supposed father Geyer. However, there is no evidence that Geyer had Jewish ancestors.
Some biographers have noted that Wagner in his final years developed interest in the Racism, racialist philosophy of Arthur de Gobineau, notably Gobineau's belief that Western society was doomed because of miscegenation between "superior" and "inferior" races. According to Robert Gutman, this theme is reflected in the opera ''Parsifal''. Other biographers (such as Lucy Beckett) believe that this is not true, as the original drafts of the story date back to 1857 and Wagner had completed the libretto for ''Parsifal'' by 1877, but he displayed no significant interest in Gobineau until 1880.
Other interpretations
Wagner's ideas are amenable to socialist interpretations; many of his ideas on art were being formulated at the time of his revolutionary inclinations in the 1840s. Thus, for example, George Bernard Shaw wrote in ''The Perfect Wagnerite'' (1883):
[Wagner's] picture of Niblunghome under the reign of Alberic is a poetic vision of unregulated industrial capitalism as it was made known in Germany in the middle of the 19th century by Friedrich Engels, Engels's book ''The Condition of the Working Class in England''.
Left-wing interpretations of Wagner also inform the writings of Theodor Adorno among other Wagner critics. Walter Benjamin gave Wagner as an example of "bourgeois false consciousness", alienating art from its social context. György Lukács contended that the ideas of the early Wagner represented the ideology of the "true socialists" (''wahre Sozialisten''), a movement referenced in Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto" as belonging to the left-wing of German bourgeois radicalism and associated with Ludwig Feuerbach, Feuerbachianism and Karl Theodor Ferdinand Grün, while Anatoly Lunacharsky said about the later Wagner: "The circle is complete. The revolutionary has become a reactionary. The rebellious petty bourgeois now kisses the slipper of the Pope, the keeper of order."
The writer Robert Donington has produced a detailed, if controversial, Jungian psychology, Jungian interpretation of the ''Ring'' cycle, described as "an approach to Wagner by way of his symbols", which, for example, sees the character of the goddess Fricka as part of her husband Wotan's "inner femininity". Millington notes that Jean-Jacques Nattiez has also applied psychoanalysis, psychoanalytical techniques in an evaluation of Wagner's life and works.
Nazi appropriation
Adolf Hitler was an admirer of Wagner's music and saw in his operas an embodiment of his own vision of the German nation; in a 1922 speech he claimed that Wagner's works glorified "the heroic Teutonic nature ... Greatness lies in the heroic." Hitler visited Bayreuth frequently from 1923 onwards and attended the productions at the theatre. There continues to be debate about the extent to which Wagner's views might have influenced Nazism, Nazi thinking. Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855–1927), who married Wagner's daughter Eva in 1908 but never met Wagner, was the author of the racist book ''The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century'', approved by the Nazi movement. Chamberlain met Hitler several times between 1923 and 1927 in Bayreuth, but cannot credibly be regarded as a conduit of Wagner's own views. The Nazis used those parts of Wagner's thought that were useful for propaganda and ignored or suppressed the rest.
While Bayreuth presented a useful front for Nazi culture, and Wagner's music was used at many Nazi events, the Nazi hierarchy as a whole did not share Hitler's enthusiasm for Wagner's operas and resented attending these lengthy epics at Hitler's insistence. Some Nazi ideologists, most notably Alfred Rosenberg, rejected ''Parsifal'' as excessively Christian and pacifist.
Guido Fackler has researched evidence that indicates that it is possible that Wagner's music was used at the Dachau concentration camp in 1933–1934 to "reeducate" political prisoners by exposure to "national music". There has been no evidence to support claims, sometimes made, that his music was played at Extermination camp, Nazi death camps during the Second World War, and Pamela Potter has noted that Wagner's music was explicitly off-limits in the camps.
Because of the associations of Wagner with antisemitism and Nazism, the Wagner's music in Israel, performance of his music in the State of Israel has been a source of controversy.
[See ]
Notes
References
Citations
Sources
Prose works by Wagner
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Online version at Gutenberg Retrieved 20 July 2010.
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Further reading
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External links
Operas
Richard Wagner Opera Richard Wagner operas, Wagner interviews, CDs, DVDs, Wagner calendar, Bayreuth Festival
Wagner Operas site featuring photographs, video, MIDI files, scores, libretti, and commentary
''Wilhelm Richard Wagner''site by Stanford University
The Wagnerian Richard Wagner news, operas, reviews, articles.
Writings
The Wagner Library. English translations of Wagner's prose works, including some of Wagner's more notable essays.
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Scores
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of the Richard Wagner Foundation
Richard Wagner Museumin the country manor Triebschen near Lucerne, Switzerland where Wagner and Cosima lived and worked from 1866 to 1872. (In German).
"Wagner" BBC Radio 4 discussion with John Deathridge, Lucy Beckett and Michael Tanner (''In Our Time'', 20 June 2002)
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