Richard Wagner

Biography

Youth

Richard Wagner was born with Leipzig the May 22nd 1813. His/her father, small civil servant, died six months after his birth. In August of the year 1814, his/her mother married the actor Ludwig Geyer who could be the true father of Wagner well. Geyer died a few years later, not without to have transmitted to the young person Richard his passion for the theater.

This last nourishes initially the ambition to become playwright, then, towards the fifteen years age, discovered the music which it decided to study while being registered with the Université of Leipzig (1831). Among the type-setters who exerted on him a notable influence, one can quote Carl Maria von Weber and Ludwig van Beethoven.

In 1833, Wagner had completed one of its first operas, the Fairies . This work, which imitated clearly the style of Weber, will not be played during more than one half-century. At the same time, it succeeds in successively taking down the positions of director musical with the operas of Würzburg and Magdeburg, which left it some pecuniary troubles. It is at that time that Wagner wrote Defense to like ( Das Liebesverbot ), opera inspired of a part of William Shakespeare ( Mesure for measurement ). Creation took place in 1836, but work was accommodated with little enthusiasm.

A little later, in 1836, Wagner married the Minna actress To plane. The couple moved in then with Königsberg then with Rīga, where Wagner occupied the musical position of director. After a few weeks, Minna left it for another which left it without the penny. Although Wagner accepted its return, it was the sign heralding the progressive decline of their marriage which finished in the suffering, thirty years later.

Before even 1839, the couple was sifted debts and had to flee Riga to escape its creditors (the moneies worry were to torment Wagner the remainder of its days). During their escape with London, they were taken in a storm which inspired in Wagner the Ghost ship . The couple also lived a few years with Paris where Richard earned his living by réorchestrant the operas of other type-setters.

Dresden

In 1840, Wagner put the last hand at its opera Rienzi . It turned over to Germany two years to make it later play Dresden, where it met a considerable success. Wagner settled in this city where he lived six years, exerting with brilliance the load of Leader of the large theater. For this period, it composed and put in scene the Ghost ship and Tannhäuser , its first masterpieces.

The stay of the Wagner in Dresden had to end because of the engagement of Richard in the anarchistic mediums. In the German States independent of the time, a nationalist movement started to make hear its voice, claiming more freedoms as well as the unification of the German nation. Wagner, which put much enthusiasm in its engagement, frequently received at his place anarchists, such as the Russian Bakounine.

The popular discontent against the Saxon government, largely spread, arrived to boiling in April 1849, when the king Frederic-Auguste II of Saxony decided to dissolve the Parliament and to reject the new constitution which the people presented to him. In May, an insurrection - vaguely supported by Wagner - burst. The incipient revolution was quickly crushed by the troops saxonnes and Prussians and of the warrants for arrest were delivered against the revolutionists. Wagner was forced to flee, initially in Paris, then with Zurich. Bakounine did not manage to escape and was imprisoned for many years.

Exile and combined influences of Schopenhauer and Mathilde Wesendonck

It is in exile that Wagner spent the twelve following years. Having completed Lohengrin before the insurrection of Dresden, he solicited his friend Franz Liszt, requesting it to take care that this opera was played in its absence. Liszt, in good friend, directed itself the first to Weimar, in August 1850.

Wagner was nevertheless in a very precarious situation, with the variation of the German musical world, without income and with very little of hope being able to make represent works which it worked out. His Minna wife, who had appreciated her last operas little, was inserted little by little in a deep depression. To crown the whole, Wagner itself was reached of erysipelas, which still increased the difficulty of its work.

During the first years that it passed to Zurich, Wagner produced a whole of remarkable tests ( the work of art of the future , Opéra and drama ) as well as a work anti-semite, the Judaism in the music . With the work of art of the future (1849), it presents a new design of the opera, the “Gesamtkunstwerk” or “total work of art”, in which the music, the song, the dance, poetry, the theater and the visual arts are interfered indissociable way.

During years which followed, Wagner fell on two independent sources of inspiration which were going to lead it to its opera révéré between all, Tristan and Isolde .

The first was the discovery of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. Wagner will claim later that this experiment was the most important moment of its life. The philosophy of Schopenhauer, centered on a pessimistic vision of the human condition, was very quickly adopted by Richard Wagner, his personal difficulties not being probably foreign with this adhesion. There will remain all its life a fervent supporter of Schopenhauer, even when its personal situation is less critical.

According to Schopenhauer, the music plays a central role among arts because it is only of them which did not milk in the material world. This opinion found an echo in Wagner which adopted it very quickly, in spite of the apparent incompatibility with its own ideas according to which it is the music which is with the service of the drama. At all events, of many aspects of the doctrines of Schopenhauer will show through in its later booklets: Hans Sachs, the poet shoe-maker of the Main Singers , is a creation typically schopenhauerienne.

It is under the influence of Schopenhauer (strongly influenced by Eastern philosophy) that Richard Wagner will become Végétarien and defender of the animal cause for which it will develop an apology in " Art and Religion". He will transmit later, but temporarily, this point of view with Nietzsche.

The second source of inspiration of Wagner was the poet and writer Mathilde Wesendonck, the woman of the rich person trading Otto von Wesendonck. It met the couple in Zurich in 1852. Otto, large admiror of Wagner, placed at its disposal a small house of its property. At the end of a few years, Wagner was enthusiast of Mathilde. Although its feelings were reciprocal, Mathilde by no means intended to compromise its marriage. Also it held her informed husband of its contacts with Wagner. Nevertheless, it will never be known if this connection remained platonic or had one or twice a beginning of concretization. Wagner did not leave of it less side, abruptly, the composition of the Tétralogie - that it will take again only twelve years later - to start to work on Tristan and Isolde , work resulting from a psychosomatic crisis started by this nonrealizable love, and corresponding to perfection with the romantic model of the work inspired by the opposed feelings. Remainder, two of charming the Wesendonck-Lieder , “Traüme” and “Im Treihaus”, composed on the poems of Mathilde, will be taken again, packed, in Tristan : “Traüme” will give “Goes down on us harms of extase” and “Im Treibhaus” worrying it prelude of the third act and its dark agreements entrusted to the violoncellos and double bass.

In 1858, Minna intercepted a letter of Wagner with Mathilde. Wagner, after the confrontation which followed, left Zurich for Venice. It went back to Paris the following year in order to supervise the setting in scene of an adaptation of Tannhäuser whose creation, in 1861, caused a scandal. The representations to come were then cancelled and Wagner left the city precipitately.

When it could finally turn over to Germany, it settled with Biebrich, in Prussia, where it started to work on the Masters Singers of Nuremberg . This opera is its merriest work by far. His second wife Cosima will write later: “Can the future generations, by seeking cooling in this single work, to have a small thought for the tears which led to these smiles! ”. In 1862, Wagner separated finally from Mined, but it will continue to financially support it until its death in 1866 (or at least its creditors will do it).

Under the patronage of the king Louis II of Bavaria

The career of Wagner took a spectacular turn in 1864, when the king Louis II reached the throne of Bavaria at the 18 years age. The young king, who admired the operas of Wagner since his childhood, made come the type-setter to Munich, settled his considerable debts and arranged himself so that its new opera can be represented. In spite of the enormous difficulties encountered at the time of the repetitions, the creation of Tristan and Isolde the June 10th 1865 was a resounding success.

During this time, Wagner was mingled with a new business which related to its connection with Cosima von Bülow. This one was the woman of a fervent supporter of Wagner: Hans von Bülow, the leader which had directed the creation of Tristan . Girl of Franz Liszt and the famous countess Marie d' Agoult, it was twenty-four years the junior by Wagner. In April 1865, it was confined of an illegitimate girl who was fore-mentioned Isolde. The news spread quickly and scandalized any Munich. Nothing to arrange, Wagner had fallen in disgrace among the members from the Court who suspected it of influencing the young king. In December 1865, Louis II was constrained to ask the type-setter to leave Munich. He would have cherished one moment the idea to abdicate his capacity to follow his hero in exile, but Wagner would quickly have dissuaded some.

This one settled then with Tribschen, close to Lucerne, on the edges of the Lac of the Four Cantons. Its opera the Masters Singers of Nuremberg was finished in 1867 and was created in Munich the June 21st of the following year. In October, Cosima finally succeeds in convincing her husband to accept the divorce. The August 25th 1870, it married Wagner which, a few months later, offered the Idylle to him de Siegfried at the time of its birthday.

This marriage lasted until the death of the type-setter. They had another girl, Eva, and a fore-mentioned son Siegfried.

Bayreuth

Once installed in its new family life, Wagner put all its energy to finish the Tétralogie . In front of the insistence of Louis II, one gave to Munich previews of the Gold of the Rhine and of the Valkyrie , but Wagner held as for him so that the complete cycle was represented in an opera especially designed for this purpose.

In 1871, it chooses the small town of Bayreuth to accommodate its new room of opera. The Wagner were made the year following there: one posed the first stone of the Festspielhaus (Palate of the festivals). In order to gather the funds for construction, the type-setter undertook a round in concerts through Germany, and various associations of support were created in several cities. It was however necessary to await a donation of the king Louis II, in 1874, so that the money necessary was finally gathered. A little later in the year, the Wagner moved in Bayreuth in a villa that Richard called “Wahnfried”.

Festspielhaus opened its doors in August 1876 at the time of the creation of the Ring of Nibelung . Famous guests honoured it with their presence: let us quote in particular the emperor Guillaume II, the emperor Pierre II of Brazil, king Louis - who remained incognito -, as well as type-setters as accomplished as Anton Bruckner, Edvard Grieg, Piotr Ilitch Tchaïkovski, or Franz Liszt.

From an artistic point of view, this festival was a remarkable success. Tchaïkovski, which had assisted to with it as a Russian correspondent, wrote: “What occurred to Bayreuth will remain in the memory of our grandchildren and their descent”. Financially, it was however an absolute disaster. Wagner had to give up organizing a second festival the following year and tried to reduce the deficit by giving a series in concerts to London.

Last years

In 1877, Wagner was harnessed with its last opera, Parsifal . The composition took of them four years to him, during which he also wrote a series of tests reactionaries on the religion and Article.

It put the last hand at Parsifal in January 1882, and made it represent at the time of the second Festival of Bayreuth. During act III of sixteenth and last representation, the August 29th, the chief Hermann Levi was victim of an indisposition. Wagner entered discreetly the orchestra pit, took the rod and directed work until its term.

At that time, Wagner was seriously sick. After the festival, the Wagner family travelled to Venice for the winter. The February 13rd 1883, Richard was carried by an heart attack. Its body was repatriated and buried in the garden of Wahnfried.

The exclusive editor of Wagner is the house Schott with Mainz.

Style and contributions of Wagner

Anything in Wagner is not included/understood if one is unaware of that he had wanted, in his youth, being Shakespeare and not Beethoven. Wagner was the author of its booklets of opera, extremely rare case in the history of the incidental music. As a poet it had an obvious talent, that only the French-speaking reader familiar of German can appreciate with his right value. Poetry is an art which does not forgive and no “average” form suffers. Wagner thus took a big risk by writing itself its booklets of opera, bet successful as well on the level of the form as of the bottom, performance which it is advisable to greet: the double genius (Victor Hugo painter, Hoffmann type-setter literary man, etc) being rather exceptional.

Richard Wagner entirely transformed the design of the opera as from 1850, no longer conceiving it like an entertainment, but like a crowned dramaturgy. The four operas of the Ring of Nibelung illustrate this Wagnerian reform to perfection. In the Tetralogy , each character (the Ring including) is associated with an autonomous musical topic whose variations indicate in which psychological climate this character evolves/moves: it is famous “the Leitmotiv” (in German: conducting reason), proceeded preexistent that Wagner pushed in extreme cases ultimate of the sound dramaturgy. Thus when Wotan evokes the Ring, the associated musical topics mix in a new variation. One can see there a demonstration of “total art” through a music reflecting at the same time the characters and their feelings, while supporting the song and underlining the scenic action. But the contribution of Richard Wagner to the music on the technical plan (Harmony and counterpoint) is quite as considerable, if not more still. It is mainly in its most determining work in this respect, namely Tristan and Isolde , that Wagner innovates in a radical way. Conceived in very particular psychological circumstances, more quickly than the other operas, Tristan constitutes a singularity, and also a hinge as well in the work of Wagner as in the history of the harmony and the counterpoint.

Admittedly, like Wilhelm Furtwängler says it, it is not in Tristan only one agreement which cannot be analyzed tonalement, and that was shown in an irrefutable way by the French musicologist Jacques Chailley in very precise and very excavated famous “Prelude analyzes”, where all the agreements and modulations are brought back, once eliminated the passing notes, the Appoggiature S, the escaped and others embroideries, with perfectly indexed harmonic sequences. It acted it is true for Chailley to make a fate with the analyzes which it found tendentious Arnold Schoenberg and later Boulez on which we will return, but it does not remain about it less than its demonstration, partition with the support, are irrefutable.

That does not withdraw anything with the genius Wagner, quite to the contrary, since it precisely knew to make of the nine with old man: so almost all its agreements, whose very famous agreement of ninth without fundamental (that one can also analyze like a seventh of species), known as “agreement of Tristan” which intervenes in the first measurements of “Prelude” can be found in the Choral S of Bach or even at Mozart, his employment in an isolated and expressive way is a brilliant innovation. But it is not there the greatest harmonic audacity of Wagner, which goes much further with less known formulas (resolution of ninth minor by its major form, Appoggiature of ninth minor forming dissonance with the third, very much used in Jazz, simultaneous use of appoggiaturas, foreign embroideries and other notes bringing to the limits of the analysis of the real agreement, etc). In addition, and contrary to an generally accepted idea, which strikes clearly with the analysis of Tristan is the obvious influence of Bach, and particularly of Bach of the Art of the running away whose attentive study is seen clearly in the contrapuntic formulas and the harmonic sequences of the “Prelude of Ier Acte” of Tristan . Bach attacks in the “Contrapunctus IV” ninth minor without preparation (“Contrapunctus IV”, measurement 79) hundred years before Tristan , an audacity of Bach among others whose Wagner could only remember. Wagner, apparently, practiced certainly the running away little, but actually the fuguées entries, camouflaged or not, are innumerable in Tristan , and still allow greater harmonic audacities than harmonic aggregations “new”.

Wagner is also famous to have innovated in a decisive way in the field of the orchestration, which is not as true as it does not appear to with it: it is in fact its genius properly musical which makes vibrate the orchestra such as Beethoven leaves it at the end of its life ( IX {{E}} Symphonie and Missa Solemnis ) of a sonority ever heard hitherto. Oddly, Wagner owes almost all its formulas with Gluck, Beethoven and Weber, the unit sounding however… as of the Wagner. Wagner indeed stretches agreements on which its precursors remain only two notes, it uses combinations massively that Beethoven did nothing but employ one or twice, its use of the redoublings even triplings of stamp which it takes again of Gluck and even of Haydn becomes systematic, with the well-known “magic” effect which often appears the partition, upon reading, obtained with an astonishing saving in means.

Wagner was, it is constantly necessary to have it with the spirit, an autodidact who has all his acquired life of the trade while innovating. Like all the effective autodidacts, it knew to be very conventional at its beginnings in order to learn the strings from its art and to make hatch its genius. One was until affirming that the genius of Wagner even came from its gaps. And in fact, Wagner forever successful to create instrumental music or chamber music: its tests in these fields showed poor results. Only a scenic reason inspired it. And yet, paradoxically, transcribed for piano alone or small unit, its symphonic pages of scenes preserve intact their magic: unsoundable mystery of all the creators…

One cannot neglect what still makes a specificity of Wagner, namely the considerable influence that it had on its successors, and in particular most famous, Arnold Schoenberg. Schoenberg, by its genius even, is undoubtedly the person in charge of a great misunderstanding. Seul Schoenberg knew at its pasticher beginnings, or rather to continue Wagner, with an equal level of quality. Poignant the Transfigured Night , monumental the Gurre-Lieder and the brilliant symphonic poem (devaluated in a contestable way by Rene Leibowitz) Pelleas und Melisande are the only true examples of continuation, not of Wagner, but of the techniques invented by him in Tristan , with a genius equivalent to that of the Master. Schoenberg in deduced that an evolutionary tendency was with work in the modern harmony, and it is well Schoenberg which believed to be able to make progress an exclusively Germanic musical tradition, of Wagner towards its system, the atonalism and the composition with twelve sounds.

Operas

The operas of Wagner constitute its principal will. One can schematically separate them in three groups:

the Fairies ( Die Feen ), Defense to like ( Das Liebesverbot ) and Rienzi are the operas of youth. These works do not have anything particularly remarkable and are seldom played nowadays.

With the Ghost ship ( DER fliegende Holländer ), then Tannhäuser and Lohengrin , Wagner writes its first romantic grand operas.

The period of maturity begins with the composition from Tristan and Isolde ( Tristan und Isolde ), often regarded as its masterpiece. Then the Masters Singers come from Nuremberg ( Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg ) and the Ring of Nibelung ( DER Boxing ring of Nibelungen ). the Ring of Nibelung , also called Tetralogy , is a whole of four operas inspired of the Mythologie S German and Scandinavian. The last opera of Wagner, Parsifal , is a contemplative work drawn from the Christian legend of the holy Graal.

Through its theoretical works and its tests, Wagner exerted a great influence in the universe of the lyric music. Marrying the theater and the music to create the “musical drama”, it was made the defender of a new design of the opera, in which the orchestra occupies a place at least as important as that of the singers. The expressivity of the orchestra is increased by the use of Leitmotiv S (small musical topics of a dramatic great power which evokes a character, an element of the intrigue, a feeling…), whose evolution and the complex tangle clarify the progression of the drama with an infinite richness.

Contrary to almost all the other type-setters of operas, Wagner wrote itself its booklets, borrowing the majority of its arguments from legends and mythologies European, generally Germanic. Its works acquire of this fact a major unity.

and Cooper Page, Heritage of fire, memories of Bayreuth , Plon, 1947.

Wolf Siegfried Wagner, the Wagner family and Bayreuth 1876-1976 , Oak, 1976.
Andre Tubeuf, Bayreuth and Wagner, hundred years of images 1876-1976 , Jean-Claude Lattès, 1981.
Gottfried Wagner, the Wagner Heritage, an autobiography , the Nile editions, 1998. Translation of the book Wer nicht put dem Wolf heult , Kiepenheuer editions & Witsch, Köln, 1997.

Sources

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