 Wagner, (Wilhelm)
Richard (1813-83), German composer and musical theorist, one of the most
influential figures of 19th-century Europe. Born May 22, 1813, in Leipzig,
Wagner studied at the University of Leipzig. Between 1833 and 1839 he worked
at provincial opera houses in Würzburg, Magdeburg, Königsberg,
and Riga. During these years he wrote the operas Die Feen (The Fairies,
1833) and Das Liebesverbot (The Forbidden Love, 1836) and several orchestral
works. In 1836, while at Königsberg, Wagner married the actor Minna
Planer. At Riga he completed the libretto and the first two acts of his
first important opera, Rienzi. In 1839 Wagner sailed to London. During
the tempestuous voyage across the North Sea, he conceived the idea for
his second major opera, Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman,
completed in 1841). After eight days in London, he traveled to France,
settling eventually in Paris, where he became acquainted with the music
of Hector Berlioz. He remained in Paris until April 1842, at times reduced
to the direst poverty. On October 20, 1842, Rienzi was produced at the
Court Theater at Dresden, Germany. Its success led to the production of
Der fliegende Holländer at Dresden on January 2, 1843. In the same
month Wagner moved to Dresden, where he became one of the conductors at
the Court Theater. Innovative Art Wagner's romantic opera Tannhäuser
was produced at Dresden on October 19, 1845. This work, with innovations
in structure and technique, perplexed audiences accustomed to the conventional
opera of the day and elicited a storm of adverse criticism. Nevertheless,
Tannhäuser was produced at Weimar, Germany, three years later by the
Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, who afterward became an enthusiastic proponent
of Wagnerian music drama (see below). The meeting of Liszt and Wagner in
1848 resulted in a lifelong friendship. In the same year the romantic opera
Lohengrin was completed, but the management of the Court Theater at Dresden,
apprehensive of public and critical reaction to another work by the composer
of Tannhäuser, declined to produce it. Liszt once more came to the
rescue and produced Lohengrin at Weimar on August 28, 1850. A Political
Radical Wagner was an extreme radical in politics. He participated in the
abortive Revolution of 1848 in Germany and, in consequence, was obliged
to flee from his homeland, first to Paris, and then to Zürich. There
he amplified the sketches, previously begun, for his famous tetralogy of
music dramas, known collectively as Der Ring des Nibelungen, and based
on the 12th-century Middle High German epic poem of the Nibelungenlied.
The texts of the Nibelung dramas were written in reverse order. Finding
that certain narrative episodes in Götterdämmerung (The Twilight
of the Gods), the final work of the tetralogy, required elaboration and
dramatic exposition to make the story altogether comprehensible, Wagner
wrote the third part, Siegfried. Still not satisfied, however, he wrote
Die Walküre and, as a further explanatory prelude, Das Rheingold.
Wagner began work on the score of Das Rheingold in November 1853, completing
it in May of the following year. By the end of December 1856, the score
of Die Walküre was finished. Meanwhile, in 1852, Wagner had made the
acquaintance of the wealthy merchant Otto Wesendonck and his wife Mathilde.
The former placed at the disposal of Wagner and Minna a small cottage,
the Asyl (German, "Asylum"), on the Wesendonck estate near Zürich;
this situation furnished the composer with the inspiration for some of
his finest music. Close association between Wagner and Mathilde soon developed
into love, which they were forced to renounce. Their romance eventually
found expression, however, in Wagner's passionate score of Tristan und
Isolde (1857-59), which is one of the longest and the most difficult to
produce of all the Wagnerian music dramas. Its first performance was on
June 10, 1865, at Munich, under the auspices of Louis II, king of Bavaria,
who had become Wagner's patron. From this period also are the Wesendonck
Lieder, settings for voice and orchestra or piano (1857-58) of five poems
by Mathilde Wesendonck. In 1861 the political ban against Wagner was lifted.
Upon his return to Prussia the composer settled in Biebrich, where he began
work on his only comic opera, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, completed
in 1867. The work was produced on June 21, 1868, at Munich, where in 1869
and 1870 Das Rheingold and Die Walküre also were given by command
of the king. Immediately after the production of Die Meistersinger Wagner
resumed work on the score of Siegfried, completing it in February 1871.
At the same time he began the composition of Götterdämmerung.
Meanwhile, on August 25, 1870, the composer, who had been separated from
his first wife for nine years, married Cosima von >
Transfer interrupted!
pianist and conductor Hans Guido von Bülow and the daughter of Liszt.
Wagner's orchestral work Siegfried Idyll (1870) was written for Cosima.
In the summer of 1872, Wagner composed the last part of Der Ring des Nibelungen,
and by November 1874, orchestration of Götterdämmerung had been
completed. On August 13-17, 1876, the premiere performance of the whole
tetralogy took place at the Festspielhaus, a theater in Bayreuth designed
and constructed especially for the presentation of Wagnerian music dramas.
In 1877 Wagner began work on Parsifal, based on legends of the Holy Grail.
The last of the Wagnerian music dramas, Parsifal was produced for the first
time on July 26, 1882. In 1882 the composer's health began to fail. Thinking
he might benefit from a change of climate, Wagner rented the Palazzo Vendramin
on the Grand Canal in Venice; he died there suddenly on February 13 of
the following year. Five days later his body was interred in the mausoleum
of his Bayreuth villa. Theoretical Works Wagner highly influenced late
19th-century thought, not only in the arts, but also in political issues
such as nationalism and social idealism. In Oper und Drama (1850-51) he
set forth his vision of a revolutionary kind of stage work, integrating
dramatic, visual, and musical elements into a wholly unified work of art,
or Gesamtkunstwerk. His other theoretical writings include Über deutsches
Musikwesen (On German Music, 1840), Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft (The Art
Work of the Future, 1849), Religion und Kunst (Religion and Art, 1880),
Über das Dirigieren (On Conducting, 1869), Über die Anwendung
der Musik auf das Drama (On the Application of Music to the Drama, 1879),
and Eine Mitteilung an meine Freunde (A Communication to My Friends, 1851).
Wagner also wrote an autobiography, My Life (1865-80; trans. 1911). Criticism
Wagner's reputation is based on his musical creations, which represent
the highest expression of romanticism in European music, and also on the
revolution he effected in both the theory and practice of operatic composition.
He began his career as a composer of opera in the conventional manner,
but by the time he started work on Der Ring des Nibelungen he was creating
an entirely new musico-dramatic form. The true line of development of the
Wagnerian music drama is from Greek drama (on which Wagner deliberately
modeled his texts) through the dramas of Shakespeare and the German poet
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller. On the purely musical side, because
of its architectural structures, its lineal evolution is from Johann Sebastian
Bach through Ludwig van Beethoven. In his treatment of harmony, Wagner
pushed the traditional system of tonality to its limits, breaking down
the conventions that gave keys and chord relationships their identity,
and leading inevitably to 20th-century atonality. Pre-Wagnerian opera had
become little more than a succession of stereotyped arias, recitatives,
duets, interludes, and finales. A fundamental principle of the music drama
is the subservience of all the arts involved, including music, to the dramatic
needs of the story. By means of the leitmotiv, or leading motive, a continuous
thematic development is achieved. The complex evolutions of each leitmotiv
and its intertwinings with others underline the emotional meaning of the
drama. The increased dramatic unity of post-Wagnerian opera was one consequence
of the tremendous influence of his art on every form of music. |