Richard Wagner: Deeds of Music Made Visible

April 26, 2018

Wilhelm Richard Wagner, 1813 - 1883 I

I Parental confusion: is Carl Friedrich Wagner, police actuary,really his father? Or Ludwig Geyer, actor and painter? (whoraised him after Carl’s death)

I Formal musical schooling also not known completely;Downplayed (deliberately) in Mein Leben, but definitelyinvolving piano and harmony instruction, as well as some worktoward a music degree at Leipzig University (as of 1831)

I Early affinity for Beethoven, played up in Mein Leben: pianotranscription of the 9 th symphony (1830), a BeethovenianSymphony in C (1832)

I Wagner, Symphony in C no 1

I 1833 named Chorus Master in Wurzburg.

I 1834, returns to Leipzig, becomes involved with the JungesDeutschland movement, contra classicism (Mozart, Goethe)as well as certain more recent, “Romantic” strains (Weber,Hoffman)

Wilhelm Richard Wagner, 1813 - 1883 III Essays: Die deutsche Oper (1834) and Bellini (1837)

I 1834, musical director for a traveling theater company, where(because?) he is in love with one of the actors, ChristineWilhelmine Planer (‘Minna’)

I 1836 marries Minna, within the year she leaves him forDietrich, wealthy merchant.

I 1837 musical director of the Riga theater, reconciles withMinna, shares an apartment with her, her sister Amalie ... anda wolf.

I 1839 Serious debt problems; they flee Riga secretely. directorof the Metropolitan Opera” (Taruskin)

I Hears Berlioz, Romeo et Juliette – opened up “a new world ofpossibilities.”

I Received in Paris by Meyerbeer, who generously connectsWagner with the Paris music community.

I Two miserable, broke years in Paris.

Wilhelm Richard Wagner, 1813 - 1883 III

I Through Meyerbeer’s influence, Rienzi accepted for 1842performance in Dresden.

I 1843 De Vliegende Hollander – less successful, but still namedKappellmeister in Dresden.

I “It was as if the former conductor of the Portland JuniorSymphony were suddenly named

I Steady job, with official duties Liebesmahl der Apostel (1843)

I An Webers Grabe

I 1848 Paris uprisings, establishment of 2nd republic.

I Wagner involved with republican movement in Dresden,espousing a moderate liberalism typical of his social milieu.

I 1849 Prussian troops put down uprising in Dresden, Wagnerflees to Switzerland.

Wilhelm Richard Wagner, 1813 - 1883 IV

I Zurich essays:I Die Kunst und die Revolution (1849)I Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft (1849)I Oper und Drama (1850)I Das Judenthum in der Musik (1850), contra Mendelssohn and

Meyerbeer – in Neue Zeithscrhift!

I In Zurich, supported by Jessie Laussot, a marriedEnglishwoman.

I 1850, Lohengrin premiered (composer absent) by Liszt inWeimar.

I Prelude to Act III (ending, into Scene 1)

I Financial troubles, depression, musical hiatus 1848-1853

I Otto Wesendonck lets his house outside Zurich to Richard andMinna; Richard falls in love withs Otto’s wife, Mathilde.Begins composition of Tristan. Minna kicks him out, moves toVenice.

Wilhelm Richard Wagner, 1813 - 1883 V

I 1864 Ludwig II ascends to the throne in Bavaria. Forgivesmany of Wagner’s sizeable debts, gives him a huge stipend.

I Now Wagner’s in love with Cosima (daughter of Liszt andDaniel Stern)

I 1872 Construction begins for Bayreuth, a theater designed toaccommodate the Wagner aesthetic.

The Ring

I Nordic (pagan) myth, by the 1840s familiar in Germany asNibelunglied.

I Brendel: “I believe the composer who could accomplish thistask in an adequate manner would become the man of his era.”

I Begins with myth of Sigfried. Siezes gold from the Nibelungs(dwarves) for the superior Volsung race. Siezes (rescues?)Brunhilde, dies through her betrayal, her atonement. Thisbecomes the narrative of the Siegfried (III) andGotterdamerung (IV) – the last of the Ring cycle.

I Then, the prehistory there becomes Die Walkure (II)I Then, 1852, composes libretto for Das Rheingold (I), narrating

the theft of the gold and forging of the ring.

I Density of Leitmotivic polyphony example: Taruskin’s analysisof the Norn’s scene in Gotterdamerung.

Stylistic Features and Development I

I Early work (e.g. Die Feen, 1830) exhibits some features oftraditional Opera convention; finale, scene/aria

I Rienzi (1835) clearly exhibits influence of Paris Grand Opera;influence in particular of Meyerbeer and Halevy.

I Der fliegende Hollander (1843); get rid of all “‘tiresomeoperatic accessories” (Mein Leben)

I Organic unityI Abandonment of periodic phrase structure

I Lohengrin (1848) – “associative” use of tonality, whereindifferent characters are asosciated with certain tonal centers.

I The end of artificial forms.

I A “true past in music” – a “tissue” of significant particles.

I “leitmotif” actually a pejorative coinage, by Heinrich Dorn;Wagner prefers Unendliche Melodie

I Extreme freedom in modulation within broader tonalorganizational framework.

From Art and Revolution (1849) I

Each one of these dissevered arts, nursed and luxuriouslytended for the entertainment of the rich, has filled theworld to overflowing with its products; in each, greatminds have brought forth marvels; but the one true Arthas not been born again, either in or since the so-calledRenaissance. The perfect Art-work, the great unitedutterance of a free and lovely public life, the Drama,Tragedy,—howsoever great the poets who have here andthere indited tragedies—is not yet born again: for thereason that it cannot be re-born, but must be born anew.

From Art and Revolution (1849) II

Only the great Revolution of Mankind, whose beginningserstwhile shattered Grecian Tragedy, can win for us thisArt-work. For only this Revolution can bring forth fromits hidden depths, in the new beauty of a noblerUniversalism, that which it once tore from theconservative spirit of a time of beautiful butnarrow-meted culture—and tearing it, engulfed.

From Art and Revolution (1849) III

Under every fold of heaven’s canopy, in every race, shallmen by real freedom grow up to equal strength; bystrength to truest love; and by true love to beauty. ButArt is Beauty energized and turned to Knowledge.

Taruskin Quoting Kunst und Revolution

Wagner vociferated in Art and Revolution. “As the spirit ofcommunity (Gemeinschaft) split itself along a thousand lines ofegoistic cleavage, so was the great united work (Gesamtkunstwerk)of Tragedy disintegrated into its individual factors.” Thosedisunited splinters, sad fruit of social degeneration, were the proudseparate arts as practiced in modern times: poetry, music,painting, and the rest, each with its own canons of illusive isolatedexcellence, each with its own zealously guarded traditions of craftand technique. No wonder that the arts had degenerated intoplaythings of the wealthy and the titled, or—worst of all—sites ofcommercial (“Jewish”) activity.

Taruskin, quoting again – Wagner on Christianity

The spiritual condition the modern arts expressed, according toWagner, was one of abjectness, “soft complacence,” socialalienation. Or rather, this fallen state expressed itself through themodern arts, for such debased artistic practices could not trulyexpress anything, least of all the despairing state of the modernworld. “Of such a condition Art could never be the trueexpression,” Wagner sneered. “Its only possible expression wasChristianity,” which emphasized not the free actions of free men,but only “Faith—that is to say, the confession of mankind’smiserable plight, and the giving up of all attempt to escape fromout this misery.”

leitmotif

Taruskin:

These particles, which Wagner (and following him, Wolzogen)simply called themes, had already been given another name bya number of other commentators. Its originator, ironicallyenough, was an old enemy of Wagner’s named Heinrich Dorn(1804–92), an acquaintance from the early days in Riga, whohad written a folksy opera of his own on the Nibelungen legendas early as 1854, and resented Wagner’s arrogant pretensionsto revolutionize the arts of music and drama. Seeking to makefun of Wagner’s “particles,” Dorn had dubbed them Leitmotive(singular, Leitmotiv), a term obviously related to “guidebook”(Leitfaden), which caricatured Wagner’s thematic particles as“motives to guide you” (i.e., through this mess). Other writersimmediately found the ill-meant designation useful, however,and it is now standard terminology in all languages. In Englishthe word is usually spelled “leitmotif” (plural, “leitmotives”).

Leitmotif and Desire I

Karol Berger:

What I actually experience when I experience the tonaltendency of a sound is the dynamics of my own desire, itsarousal, its satisfaction, its frustration. It is my owndesire for the leading tone to move up, the satisfaction ofmy own desire when it so moves, the frustration thereofwhen it refuses to budge or when it moves elsewhere,that I feel.... Thus, the precondition of my being able tohear an imaginary pattern of lines of directed motion in atonal work is that I first experience the desires,satisfactions, and frustrations of this sort.

(A Theory of Art)

Leitmotif and Desire II

It follows that tonal music, like a visual medium, mayrepresent an imaginary object different from myself, animaginary world, albeit a highly abstract one, consistingof lines of directed motion. But, unlike a visual medium,tonal music also makes me experience directly thedynamics of my own desiring, my own inner world, and itis this latter experience that is the more primordial one,since any representation depends on it.

Taruskin:

Leitmotif and Desire III

By combining precognitive musical process with cognitivesymbolism, in other words, Wagner had it both ways: themusic through which he constructed his mythic dramaswas the instrument of both “desire itself” and of“knowing the object of desire.”

Tristan und Isolde, 1865

I Plot: two people love eachother, she’s betrothed to his uncle,they are forcibly separated, he’s killed, she dies in sympathy.

I Prelude

I O Sink Hernieder – the end of act II, scene II

I Conclusion – Isoldes Liebestod (Mild und leise)— Liszt’sTranscription

Tristan Continued

What did Wagner think the drama was about?

“Suddenly aflame, they must confess they belong only toeach other. No end, now, to the yearning, the desire, thebliss, the suffering of love: world, power, fame, splendor,honor, knighthood, loyalty, friendship —all scattered likean empty dream; one thing alone still living: yearning,yearning, unquenchable, ever- regeneratedlonging—languishing, thirsting; the onlyredemption—death, extinction, eternal sleep!”

(Quotedin Taruskin)

Tristan chord

I The myth of the tristan chord

I Taruskin’s little composition

Metonymic bits of Tristan

1. Prelude

2. O sink hernieder, climax of act II

3. Mild und Leise, (Isolde’s Liebestod), climax of entire opera

Philosophy as Opera I

I Beethoven (1870) – words have finite meaning, music doesnot. Music is therefore better. Schopenhauer.

I It’s not a marriage of music and words, but of music anddramatic simulation of life. Of the noumenal and phenomenal(kantian and Schopenhauer’s terms).

I The music “includes the Drama within itself.”I Music’s relationship to drama is analogous to the following

relationship:I Space and time structure our world, but we’re not aware of it.I “As we construct the phenomenal world by application of the

laws of time and space...so this conscious presentation of theIdea of the world in the drama would be conditioned by theinner laws of music, which assert themselves in the dramatistunconsciously, much as we draw on the laws of causality in ourperception of the phenomenal world”

I Kant/Schopenhauer “turned into a theory of opera.” (BryanMagee, Wagner and Philosophy, 231)