Richard Wagner and Opera
One of the key figures in the history of opera, Wagner was largely responsible for altering its orientation in the nineteenth century. His program of artistic reform accelerated the trend towards organically conceived, through-composed structures, as well as influencing the development of the orchestra, of a new breed of singer, and of various aspects of theatrical practice. As the most influential composer during the second half of the nineteenth century, Richard Wagner's conception of music remains very much with us even a century after his death.
He was a remarkable innovator both in harmony and the structure of his work, creating his own version of the Gesamtkunstwerk, dramatic compositions in which the arts were brought together in a single unity. In the later part of his career Wagner enjoyed the support of King Ludwig II of Bavaria and was finally able to establish his own theatre and festival at the Bavarian town of Bayreuth. He developed the use of the Leitmotiv (leading motif) as a principle of musical unity, his dramatic musical structure depending on the interweaving of melodies or fragments of melody associated with characters, incidents or ideas in the drama. It was not Wagner's style of vocal composition in his Music Dramas that has remained so influential, but his orchestral language of chromatic tension and release, his brilliant use of instrumental tone color, and his flair for dramatic effects balanced with his long, sensually serene harmonic progressions that have become a mainstay in the arsenal of modern composers.
Wagner won his first operatic success in Dresden with the opera Rienzi, based on a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. In Dresden he also gained much...
... middle of paper ...
...th opera The Twilight of the Gods was finished, King Ludwig provided the necessary funds.
Richard Wagner remains for many the most fascinating figure in nineteenth century music. His life and his music arouse passion like that of no other composer. Wagner's works are hated as much as they are worshiped in the world, even today. Already at his time, he was a source of debate and controversy. When Wagner died in 1883, over 10.000 books and articles were written about him. The amount of research has multiplied after his death. Wagner inspired not only musicians and composers but artists alike, too. One of the most famous artists to illustrate Wagner's operas was the noted 19th century German painter Ferdinand Leeke (1859-1925). As a man, Wagner was prepared to sacrifice his family and friends in the cause of his own music, and he will never be known otherwise.
In his day, Johann Adolph Hasse was at the forefront of Italian opera. Although he composed a fair amount of sacred works, he is best known for his operatic output. He was widely popular throughout Italy and Germany, and was commissioned by courts and opera houses throughout Europe. His performances were attended by cultural figures at the time, as well as some of the biggest names in common-era music today. In his later life, styles changed and so Hasse’s acclaim diminished after his death. But generations later, he was re-established as a figurehead and icon of classic ancient Italian opera, a designation he possesses even today.
In terms of artists and their influences, the case of Nietzsche and Wagner has been the focal point of discussion between many great academic minds of the last century. The controversy surrounding the relationship has led many to postulate that the eventual break between the two men may have contributed to the untimely death of Wagner in 1882, and Nietzsche's eight-year writing spurt from 1883 - 1888.
Wagner’s early years were filled with turbulence. Opera seemed an inevitability from the start with several of his older sisters becoming opera singers and his own life never lacked operatic drama. However his first all-consuming passion was not music but literature. Wagner was only 11 when he wrote a drama, influenced by Shakespeare and Greek drama, in which 42 characters died in the first four acts, and a lucky few reappeared as ghosts in the fifth act. Four years later Wagner decided to become a compo...
The creation of Parsifal, Wagner’s last and most dramatic work, lasted 25 years from 1857 to 1882, embracing the last third of the composer’s life, and thus absorbing his most mature and thoughtful ideas. Inspired by Wolfram von Eschenbach’s poem Parzival, Wagner at the same time sharply criticizes the 13th century author, calling him a poet of “barbaric and muddled period” who “understands nothing whatever of the real content” (Beckett 3). Therefore, the poem conjured up the vision of the future opera in Wagner’s imagination. However, it is the poem’s imperfection (in the eyes of Wagner) that made the composer seek for a more organized and meaningful form for the plot and actually gave a kick-start to Parsifal’s creation. Wolfram’s poem included characters that were mainly plain, while he focused on the plot and the symmetry of the events more. Meanwhile, Wagner managed to develop psychological depth in all Wolfram’s characters and intensify their dramatic individualities (K...
For the musical composer essay, I have chosen to write about a man who I felt made the greatest impact on Romantic opera in the 19th century this master of a man was given the name Giuseppe Fortunio Francesco Verdi but was commonly known as Giuseppe Verdi by all who knew and loved him. This great man was born on either October 9, or 10 in the year 1813 in the community of Le Roncole, near a small town called Busseto in the province of Parma, Italy his astrological sign is that of a Libra. His mother and father were both of Italian descent and their names were Carlo and Luigia Verdi respectively. Now this is where it gets complicated Verdi told every person that talked to him about his background that his parents were illiterate peasants. Despite this lie that Verdi told them they later discovered that his parents were not illiterate peasants as he had claimed but were very smart individuals tha...
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven are very famous past composers that have created many pieces that have influenced not just people of their time, but people in modern times as well.
MONDELLI, PETER. "The Sociability Of History In French Grand Opera: A Historical Materialist Perspective." 19Th Century Music 37.1 (2013): 37-55. Academic Search Premier. Web. 6 May 2014.
Paul Hindemith set out to anchor a new movement towards 'unnatural' music, while Germany lacked composers of New Music, to attempt to bring structure and pedagogy to the creation of an otherwise unstructured and unteachable new musical art form. Being in exile from Germany due to his unconventional and unappreciated (by the Nazi party primarily) work, he sought refuge in the United States to pursue and be faithful to his art. He discovered that theory constants were truly undefinable, however the process of trying to find them opened his mind increasingly inwardly.1 Hindemith’s ideas permeate his musical creations and his chronology of works represent a timeline of their changes. The first of three movements, “Angelic Concert”, in his Mathis der Maler symphony preceding his opera, is an example of how his theoretical processes ultimately came together into a solidified and understandable practice.
Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig Germany on May 22nd, 1813. When he was a young boy Wagner’s father passed away a few months after he was born, but his mother Johanna remarried a close family friend, Ludwig Geyer. He was an actor, playwright, and painter, Geyer was also looked at as important father figure in Wagner’s life. Geyer realized Wagner expressed no musical attribute even his teachers said, “he would torture the piano” but as time went on Wagner showed great determination and interest in theater and music after Greyer introduced him to theatrical life. This led Wagner to write his first drama at the age of 11 and encouraged him to start taking
Richard Wagner was supremely interested in the music of other composers, both that of his contemporaries and those who had influenced the operatic stage before him. As an opera composer and librettist himself, he listened to the offerings of other composers carefully, forming his opinions with even more caution. In his anaylsis of Mozart’s work, Wagner credited the composer with “creating true German opera”
Richard Wagner was one of the most influential and controversial classical composers of all time. Most of his works were operas and they addressed many aspects of his personal feelings: society, politics, religions, etc. Though many hated (and still hate) him and his work, most revere him to be a multitalented genius that brought 19th Century music to higher levels.
Johannes Brahms was a famous German composer that was born in Hamburg on 7 May 1833. “Beethoven, who was to cast such a long shadow over the mature man, had been dead for six years; Schubert, whom he revered almost as much, for five” (Holmes 7). Brahms’s father was a musician and his everyday repetitions supported boy’s interest to music. The man made a great career as a pianist and composer. Unlike Lizst and Wagner, who represented new movement of a descriptive music, Brahms preferred to use German classical musical compositions as a basis for his works. As the composer opposed the “music of the future” movement, some experts could call him a conservator. However, many authors believe Brahms was a progressive composer. This issue became the main idea of the essay Brahms the Progressive written by Arnold Shoenberg. The author had a purpose to prove this “classicist [and] academician, was a great innovator in the realm of musical language, that, in fact, he was a great progressive” (Shoenberg 56). Brahms’s music was used as a
He was the son either of the police actuary Friedrich Wagner, who died soon after his birth, or of his mother's friend the painter, actor and poet Ludwig Geyer, whom she married in August 1814. He went to school in Dresden and then Leipzig; at 15 he wrote a play, at 16 his first compositions. In 1831 he went to Leipzig University, also studying music with the Thomaskantor, C.T. Weinlig; a symphony was written and successfully performed in 1832. In 1833 he became chorus master at the Würzburg theatre and wrote the text and music of his first opera, Die Feen; this remained unheard, but his next, Das Liebesverbot, written in 1833, was staged in 1836. By then he had made his début as an opera conductor with a small company which however went bankrupt soon after performing his opera. He married the singer Minna Planer in 1836 and went with her to Königsberg where he became musical director at the theatre, but he soon left and took a similar post in Riga where he began his next opera, Rienzi, and did much conducting, especially of Beethoven.
Robert Schumann was a composer and music critic who lived from 1810-1856. He considered himself to be the one to follow in Beethoven and Schubert's footsteps. At the end of his career, Schumann had left his audiences quite puzzled, even his wife Clara Wiek Schumann found some his works to be "confusing and out there". During the late 19th century, Schumann's works mostly were considered undistinguished, gray, and colorless, but that was the opposite of what Schumann intended, he had intended to "reinvent instrumental music".
Earning a coveted spot with the greats in music history, Johannes Brahms took the music world with force. A leading composer in the Romantic period, he brought back the classical styles popularized by previous composers. Although known for his symphonies and sonatas, he wrote over 200 works. Looking at the highlights of his life, his worldview, and his music, one sees the true person of Johannes Brahms.