Richard Wagner The Life Of Essay Research

Richard Wagner, The Life Of Essay, Research Paper

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, though not executed to the last detail, 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. Wagner thought his music dramas were to be the models for Twentieth Century opera, but he could not foresee the path of total abandonment of traditional harmony that was to revolutionize music in the early Twentieth Century.

Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig, Germany in 1813 as the son of a policeman, Friedrich Wagner, who died soon after the composer’s birth. His mother remarried the painter-actor-poet, Ludwig Geyer, in August 1814. Many people believe that Geyer was Wagner’s biological father, since the mother and Geyer had been friends long before Friedrich Wagner s death. There is much evidence that Richard believed this as well.

Wagner attended school in Dresden and then Leipzig. At age fifteen, he wrote a play, and at sixteen he composed his first music: two piano sonatas and a string quartet. In 1831 he attended Leipzig University, and he also studied piano and composition with the Cantor of St. Thomas Choir School. Wagner’s formal training in music was brief, and he was largely a self-taught musician. He composed a symphony, and it was successfully performed in 1832. In 1833 he was employed as the chorus master at the W rzburg Theater where he wrote the text and music of his first opera, Die Feen (The Fairies). His first opera was never produced during Wagner’s lifetime. It was first performed by Hermann Levi in Munich in 1888.

Wagner married the singer, Minna Planer, in 1836 and went with her to K nigsberg, where he became musical director at the city theater. But he soon resigned from the position and took a similar post in Riga. In Riga he gained much experience conducting the symphonies and overtures of Beethoven. His marriage suffered from displays of his personal character as the couple’s financial debts mounted in Riga. In 1839 the Wagner’s “slipped away” from creditors in Riga by ship to London and then to Paris, where he was befriended by the composer, Meyerbeer.

In Paris Wagner did musical arranging for publishers and theaters. He also labored on the text and music of an opera based on the “Flying Dutchman” legend. But in 1842 Rienzi, his large-scale opera with a political theme, set in imperial Rome, was accepted for production in Dresden, and Wagner went there for its highly successful premiere. Its theme reflects something of Wagner’s own politics. The Dutchman, produced the next year, was less well received, though it was a much better constructed music drama than Rienzi was. The Dutchman began Wagner’s movement away from the “number opera” tradition. The success of these two operas gained for Wagner the prestigious post as Orchestra Conductor at the Dresden court.

Wagner was largely his own librettist in his music dramas, and the theme of redemption through a woman’s love, in The Dutchman, recurred in Wagner’s works and perhaps his life also. In 1845 Tannh user was completed and performed, and Lohengrin was begun. In 1848 he was caught up in political revolution, and the next year he fled to Weimar where Firencz Liszt helped him. Later he fled to Switzerland and also France. Politically suspect, Wagner was unable to return to Germany for several years.

In Z rich during his exile of 1850, he wrote his ferociously anti-Semitic tract: Jewishness in Music. Some passages of this short work were an attack on Meyerbeer, who had previously befriended him in Paris. Also while in Zurich, he completed his basic statement on musical theater, Opera and Drama. Wagner also began sketching the text and music for a series of monumental operas based on the Nordic and Germanic myths. By 1853 the texts for this four-night cycle of music dramas, Der Ring des Nibelungen, were completed and published. Wagner read his texts to his friends, among whom were his generous patrons, the wealthy Swiss industrialist, Otto Wesendonck and his wife Mathilde.

Wagner became involved in an extramarital affair with Mathilde Wesendonck who had fallen in love with him. Mrs. Wesendonck wrote love poems to Wagner that he set to music. He also composed the Piano Sonata in A-Flat Major for Mathilde. This affair inspired the music drama Tristan und Isolde which was first conceived in 1854 and completed five years later. The basic plot of Tristan is the theme of forbidden love. By 1854 Wagner had completed more than half of the music to Der Ring des Nibelungen. But he abandoned Siegfried in the middle of the second act in 1857, not to resume work on this opera until 1869.

In 1855 Wagner conducted in London, and tensions with his wife Minna led to a prolonged stay in Paris where Minna eventually joined him in 1860. In 1862 he was freely allowed to return to Germany, and that same year Wagner and Minna separated permanently. Minna could accept most aspects of Wagner’s less-than-sterling personal