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WILHELM RICHARD WAGNER (1813-1883)
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WILHELM See also:RICHARD See also:WAGNER (1813-1883)
, See also:German dramatic composer, poet and See also:essay-writer, was See also:born at See also:Leipzig on the 22nd of May 1813
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In 1822 he was sent to the Kreuzschule at See also:Dresden, where he did so well that, four years later, he translated the first twelve books of the Odyssey for amusement
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In 1828 he was removed to the Nicolaischule at Leipzig, where he was less successful
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His first See also:music See also:master was Gottlieb See also: Wagner failed to gain a footing, and Rienzi, destined for the See also:Grand Opera, was rejected . He completed it, however, and in 1842 it was produced at Dresden, where, with Madame Schroeder See also:Devrient and Herr Tichatschek in the See also:principal parts, it achieved a success which went far to make him famous . But though in Rienzi Wagner had shown See also:energy and ambition, that See also:work was far from representing his preconceived ideal . This he now endeavoured to embody in Der fliegende Hollander, for which he designed a libretto quite See also:independent of any other treatment of the See also:legend . The piece was warmly received at Dresden on the 2nd of See also:January 1843; but its success was by no means equal to that of Rienzi . See also:Spohr, however, promptly discovered its merits, and produced it at See also:Cassel some months later, with very favourable results . On the 2nd of See also:February 1843 Wagner was formally installed as Hofkapellmeister at the Dresden theatre, and he soon set to work on a new opera . He See also:chose the legend of See also:Tannhauser, See also:collecting his materials from the See also:ancient Tannhauser-Lied, the Volksbuch, See also:Tieck's poetical Erzahlung, See also:Hoffmann's See also:story of Der Sangerkrieg, and the See also:medieval poem on Der Wartburgkrieg . This last-named legend introduces the incidental poem of " Loherangrin," and so led Wagner. to the study of Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival and Titurel, with See also:great results later on . But for the See also:present he confined himself to the subject in See also:hand; and on the 19th of See also:October 1845 he produced his Tannhauser, with Schroeder Devrient, Johanna Wagner,' Tichatschek and Mitterwurzer in the principal parts . Notwithstanding this powerful See also:cast, the success of the new work was not brilliant, for it carried still further the principles embodied in Der fliegende Hollander, and the See also:time was not ripe for them . But Wagner boldly fought for them, and might have prevailed earlier had he not taken See also:part in the See also:political agitations of 1849, after which his position in Dresden became untenable .
In fact, after the See also:flight of the See also:
The scheme for See also:building a new theatre at See also:Munich having been abandoned, there was no opera-See also:house in See also:Germany See also:fit for so See also:colossal a work
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A project was therefore started for the erection of a suitable building at See also:Bayreuth (q.v.)
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Wagner laid the first See also: The first sixteen performances took See also:place at Bayreuth, in See also:July and August 1882, under Wagner's own directing, and fully realized all expectations . Unhappily the exertion of directing so many consecutive performances seems to have been too much for the See also:veteran master's strength, for towards the See also:close of 1882 his See also:health began to decline rapidly . He spent the autumn at See also:Venice, and was well enough on See also:Christmas See also:Eve to conduct his See also:early symphony (composed in 1833) at a private performance given at the Liceo See also:Marcello . But See also:late in the afternoon of the 13th of February 1883 his See also:friends were shocked by his sudden death from See also:heart-failure . Wagner was buried at Wahnfried in the tomb he had himself prepared, on the 18th of February; and a few days afterwards King See also:Ludwig rode to Bayreuth alone, and at dead of See also:night, to pay his last See also:tribute to the master of his world of dreams . (W . S . R.; D . F . T.) In the articles on Music and OPERA, Wagner's task in music-drama is described, and it remains here to discuss his progress in the operas themselves . This progress has perhaps no parallel in any See also:art, and certainly none in music, for even See also:Beethoven's progress was purely an increase in range and See also:power . Beethoven, we know, lost sympathy with his early works as he See also:grew older; but that was because his later works absorbed his See also:interest, not because his early works misrepresented his ideals . Wagner's earlier works have too See also:long been treated as if they represented the pure and healthy childhood of his later ideal; as if Lohengrin stood to Parsifal as See also:Haydn, See also:Mozart and early Beethoven stand to Beethoven's last quartets . But Wagner never thus represented the childhood of an ideal, though he attained the manhood of the most comprehensive ideal yet known in art . To See also:change the See also:metaphor—the ideal was always in sight, and Wagner never swerved from his path towards it; but that path began in a See also:blaze of garish false See also:lights, and it had become very tortuous before the See also:light of See also:day prevailed . Beethoven was trained in the greatest and most advanced musical tradition of his time . For all his Wagnerian impatience, his progress was no struggle from out of a squalid environment; on the contrary, one of his latest discoveries was the greatness of his master Haydn . Now Wagner's excellent teacher Weinlig did certainly, as Wagner himself testifies, See also:teach him more of See also:good music than Beethoven, Liszt saw what was wanted at once, and did it . Success was his See also:reward; and with this success he now approaches me, saying " See, we have come thus far; now create us a new work, that we may go further." Lohengrin was, in fact, produced at Weimar under Liszt's direction on the 28th of August 1850 . It was a severe trial to Wagner not to hear his own work, but he knew that it was in good hands, and he responded to Liszt's See also:appeal for a new creation by studying the See also:Nibelungenlied and gradually shaping it into a gigantic tetralogy . At this time also he first began to See also:lay out the See also:plan of See also:Tristan and Isolde, and to think over the possibilities of Parsifal . During his See also:exile Wagner matured his plans and perfected his musical See also:style; but it was not until some considerable time after his return that any of the works he then meditated were placed upon the See also:stage, In 1855 he accepted an invitation to London, where he conducted the concerts of the Philharmonic Society with great success . In 1857 he completed the libretto of Tristan and Isolde at Venice, adopting the See also:Celtic legend modified by Gottfried of Strasburg's medieval version . But the music was delayed until the See also:strange incident of a See also:message from the See also:emperor of See also:Brazil encouraged Wagner to complete it in 1859 .
In that year Wagner visited Paris for the third time; and after much negotiation, in which he was nobly supported by the See also:Prince and Princess Metternich, Tannhduser was accepted at the Grand Opera
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Magnificent preparations were made; it was rehearsed 164 times, 14 times with the full See also:orchestra; and the scenery and dresses were placed entirely under the composer's direction
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More than £8000 was expended upon the venture; and the work was performed for the first time in the See also:French See also:language and with the new Venusberg music on the 13th of See also:
King Ludwig of See also:Bavaria was much struck with it, and in 1864 invited Wagner, who was then at See also:Stuttgart, to come to Munich and finish his work there
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Wagner accepted with rapture
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The king gave him an See also:annual See also: Wagner was always an omnivorous reader, and books were then, as now, both cheaper than music and easier to read . Moreover, the higher problems of rhythmic See also:movement in the classical See also:sonata forms are far beyond the See also:scope of See also:academic teaching, which is compelled to be contented with a See also:practical plausibility of musical design; and the instrumental music which was considered the highest style of art in 183o was as far beyond Wagner's early command of such plausibility as it was obviously already becoming a See also:mere academic See also:game . Lastly, the rules of that game were useless on the stage, and Wagner soon found in See also:Meyerbeer a master of grand opera who was dazzling the world by means which merely disgusted the more serious academic musicians of the day . In Rienzi Wagner would already have been Meyerbeer's See also:rival, but that his sincerity, and his initial lack of that musical savoir faire which is See also:prior to the individual handling of ideas, put him at a disadvantage . Though Meyerbeer wrote much that is intrinsically more dull and vulgar than the overture to Rienzi, he never combined such serious efforts with a technique so like that of a military bandmaster . The step from Rienzi to Der fliegende Hollander is without parallel in the See also:history of music, and would be inexplicable if Rienzi contained nothing good and if Der fliegende Hollander did not contain many reminiscences of the decline of See also:Italian opera; but it is noticeable that in this See also:case the lapses into vulgar music have a distinct dramatic value . Though Wagner cannot as yet be confidently credited with a satiric intention in his See also:bathos, the fact remains that all the Rossinian passages are associated with the character of Daland, so as to See also:express his vulgar delight at the prospect of finding a rich son-in-See also:law in the mysterious Dutch See also:seaman . Meanwhile the See also:rest of the work (except in the prettily scored " See also:Spinning See also:Song," and other harmless and vigorous tunes) has more See also:affinity with Wagner's mature style than the bulk of its much more ambitious successors, Tannhauser and Lohengrin . The wonderful overture is more highly organized and less unequal than that of Tannhauser; and although Wagner uses less Leit-motif than See also:Weber (see OPERA, ad fin.) and divides the piece into " See also:numbers " of classical See also:size, the effect is so continuous that the divisions could hardly be guessed by See also:ear . Moreover, the work was intended to be in one See also:act, and is now so performed at Bayreuth; and, although it is very long for a one-act opera, this is certainly the only See also:form which does See also:justice to Wagner's conception.' Spohr's appreciation of Der fliegende Hollander is a remarkable point in musical history; and his See also:criticism that Wagner's style (in Tannhauser) " lacked rounded periods " shows the best effect of that style on a well-disposed contemporary mind . Of course, from Wagner's mature point of view his early style is far too much cut up by periods and full closes; and its prophetic traits are so incomparably more striking than its resemblance to any earlier art that we often feel that only the full closes stand between it and the true Wagner . But Spohr would feel Wagner's works to be an advance upon contemporary romantic opera rather than a foreshadowing of an unknown future . When we listen to the See also:free declamation of the singers at the outset of Der fliegende Hollander—a declamation which is accompanied by ' The subsequent See also:division into three acts, as given in all the published See also:editions, has been effected in the crudest way by inserting a full close in the orchestral interludes at the changes of See also:scene, and then beginning the next scene by taking up the interludes again . The true version can be recovered from the published score as follows: In act i skip from the last See also:bar but four to the gist bar of the introduction to the 2nd act; and at the end of the 2nd act skip from the last bar but five to the 8th bar of the entr'acte to the 3rd act.an orchestral and thematic texture as far removed from that of mere recitative as it is from the forms of the classical See also:aria—the repetition of a whole See also:sentence in See also:order to form a See also:firm musical close has almost as See also:quaint a ring as a Shakespearean rhymed tag would have in a prose drama of See also:Ibsen . To Spohr the frequency of these incidents must have produced the impression that Wagner was perpetually beginning arias and breaking them off at once . With all its defects, Der fliegende Hollander is the most masterly and the least unequal of Wagner's early works . As drama it stood immeasurably above any opera since See also:Cherubini's Medee . As a complete See also:fusion between dramatic and musical movement, its very crudities point to its immense advance towards the See also:solution of the problem, propounded chaotically at the beginning of the 17th See also:century by See also:Monteverde, and solved in a See also:simple form by See also:Gluck . And as the twofold musical and dramatic achievement of one mind, it already places Wagner beyond parallel in the history of art . Tannhauser is on a grander scale, but its musical See also:execution is disappointing . The weakest passages in Der fliegende Hollander are not so helpless as the original recitatives of See also:Venus in the first act; or Tannhauser's song, which was too far involved in the whole scheme to be ousted by the mature " New Venusberg music " with which Wagner fifteen years later got rid both of the end of the overture and what he called his " Palais-Royal " Venus . It is really very difficult to understand See also:Schumann's impression that the musical technique of Tannhauser shows a remarkable improvement . Not until the third act does the great Wagner arbitrate in the struggle between amateurishness and theatricality in the music, though at all points his See also:epoch-making stagecraft asserts itself with a force that tempts us to treat the whole work as if it were on the Wagnerian See also:plane of Tannhauser's See also:account of his See also:pilgrimage in the third act . But the history of See also:mid-19thcentury music is unintelligible until we See also:face the fact that, when the See also:anti-Wagnerian storm was already at its height, Wagner was still fighting for the recognition of music which was most definite just where it realized with ultra-Meyerbeerian brilliance all that Wagner had already begun to detest . No contemporary, unaided by See also:personal knowledge, could be expected to See also:trust in Wagner's purity of ideal on the strength of Tannhauser, which actually achieved popularity by such coarse methods of See also:climax as the revivalistic end of the overture, by such maudlin pathos as 0 du mein holder Abendstern, and by the amiably childish grand-opera skill with which See also:half the See also:action is achieved by processions and a considerable fraction of the music is represented by fanfares . These features established the work in a position which it will always maintain by its unprecedented dramatic qualities and by the See also:glory reflected from Wagner's later achievements; but we shall not appreciate the marvel of its nobler features if we continue at this time of day to regard the bulk of the music as worthy of a great composer . After even the finest things in Tannhauser, the Vorspiel to Lohengrin comes as a See also:revelation, with its quiet solemnity and breadth of design, its ethereal purity of See also:tone-See also:colour, and its complete emancipation from earlier operatic forms . The suspense and climax in the first act is so intense, and the whole drama is so well designed, that we must have a very vivid See also:idea of the later Wagner before we can see how far the quality of musical thought still falls See also:short of his ideals . The elaborate choral See also:writing sometimes rises to almost Hellenic regions of dramatic art; and there is no crudeness in the passages that carry on the story quietly in reaction from the climaxes—a test far too severe for Tannhauser and rather severe for even the mature works of Gluck and Weber . The orchestration is already almost classically Wagnerian; though there remains an excessive amount of tremolo, besides a few lapses into comic violence, as in the yelpings which accompany Ortrud's rage in the night-scene in the second act . But the mere tone-See also:colours of that scene are enough to make a casual listener imagine that he is dealing with the true Wagner: the variety of tone never fails, and depends on no immoderate See also:paraphernalia; for, far-reaching as are the results of the systematic increase of the classical pairs of See also:wind-See also:instruments to See also:groups of three, this is a very modest reform compared to the banausic " extra attractions " of every new production of Meyerbeer's . But there is another See also:side to the picture . With the growing certainty of See also:touch a stiffness of movement appears which gradually disturbs the listener who can appreciate freedom, whether in the classical forms which Wagner has now abolished, or in the majestic flow of Wagner's later style . Full closes and repeated sentences no longer confuse the issue, but in their See also:absence we begin to See also:notice the incessant squareness of the ostensibly free rhythms . The immense amount of pageantry, though (as in Tannhauser) good in dramatic See also:motive and executed with splendid stage-See also:craft, goes far to stultify Wagner's already vigorous attitude of protest against grand-opera methods; by way of preparation for the ethereally poetic end he gives us a disinfected present from Meyerbeer at the beginning of the last scene, where mounted trumpeters career See also:round the stage in full blast for three long minutes; and the prelude to the third act is an outburst of sheer gratuitous vulgarity . Again, the anti-Wagnerians were entirely justified in penetrating below the splendidly simple and original orchestration of the night-scene between Ortrud and Telramund, and pointing out how feebly its music drifts among a dozen vague keys by means of the diminished 7th; a See also:device which teachers have tried to See also:weed out of every high-flown exercise since that otiose chord was first discovered in the 17th century . The mature Wagner would not have carried out twenty bars in his flattest scenes with so little musical invention . We must not forget that these boyish demerits belong to the work of a See also:man of See also:thirty-five whose claims and aspirations already purported to See also:dwarf the whole See also:record of the See also:classics . And the defects are in all respects See also:commonplace; they have no resemblance to that uncanny discomfort which often warns the See also:wise critic that he is dealing with an immortal . The crowning complication in the effect of Der fliegende Hollander, Tannhauser and Lohengrin on the musical thought of the rgth century was that the unprecedented fusion of their musical with their dramatic contents revealed some of the meaning of serious music to ears that had been See also:deaf to the classics . Wagnerism was henceforth proclaimed out of the mouths of babes and sucklings; learned musicians felt that it had an unfair See also:advantage; and by the time Wagner's popularity began to thrive as a persecuted See also:heresy he had See also:left it in the See also:lurch . Wagner had hardly finished the score of Lohengrin before he was at work upon the poem of Der Ring des Nibelungen . And with this he suddenly became a mature artist . On a superficial view this is a See also:paradox, for there are many more violations of pronability and much graver faults of structure in the later works than in the earlier . Every critic could recognize the structural merits of the earlier plays, for their operatic conventionalities and abruptness of motive are always intelligible as stage devices . See also:Jealousy might prompt a doubt whether these plays were within the scope of " legitimate " music; but they were obviously stories of exceptional musical and romantic beauty, presented with See also:literary resources unprecedented in operatic libretti . Now the later dramas are often notoriously awkward and redundant; while the removal of those convenient operatic devices which symbolize situations instead of developing them, does not readily appear to be compensated for by any See also:superior See also:artistic resource . But there is a higher point of view than that of story-telling . 
In the development of characters and intellectual ideas Wagner's later works show a power before which his earlier stagecraft shrinks into insignificance . It would not have sufficed even to indicate his later ideas . To handle these so successfully that we can discriminate defects from qualities at all, is See also:proof of the technique of a master, even though the faults extend to whole categories of literature . The faults make See also:analysis exceptionally difficult, for they are no longer commonplace; indeed, the gravest dangers of See also:modern Wagnerism arise from the fact that there is hardly any non-musical aspect in which Wagner's later work is not important enough to produce a school of essentially non-musical critics who have no notion how far Wagner's mature music transcends the rest of his thought, tier how often it rises where his See also: |