Phillip Hill

Jay Grymes

Music History 2

13 March 2016

Repertoire Presentation 2

In the Romantic era, composers yearned to create music that was not only technically sound, but also expressive. From the times of the Empfindsamer Stil, an emotional movement in German Lieder, and even as far back as baroque ornamentation, composers had been looking for ways to portray emotion in their compositions. This was exactly the issue for Richard Wagner (1813-1883). He wanted to break free from the old traditions of opera and create something more through the use of pre-planned motives that would be set to specific emotions within the context of the plot. These operas would be called Music Dramas.

Richard Wagner was a mid-19th century Romantic composer, theatre director, and conductor primarily known for his operas, or, as they were later called, music dramas. Wagner was born in Leipzig,

Germany, and was the ninth child of Carl Friedrich Wagner, a police clerk, and Johanna Rosine, the daughter of a baker. When his father passed away from typhus, the six month old Wagner took on a new father figure, an actor and playwright by the name of Ludwig Geyer. It was through Geyer’s passion for the arts that inspired Wagner to pursue theatre and eventually music, as Wagner would take part in

Geyer’s productions. Throughout most of his early childhood, Wagner sought to pursue a career as a playwright. His WWV1, a tragedy entitled Leubald, was his first creative effort and he was determined to set it to music. He first studied composition and harmony from 1828-1831 with composer Christian

Gottlieb Muller (1800-1863). Inspired by Ludwig van Beethoven’s (1770-1827) 9th symphony, which he saw in the March of 1828, he wrote a piano transcription of it. In 1829, Wagner saw dramatic soprano

Wilhelmine Schroder-Devrient perform and she became his inspiration to pursue writing opera. In 1831,

Wagner was able to enroll as a student at the University of Leipzig, where he took composition lessons with Christian Theodor Weinlig (1780-1842). In 1833, at the age of 20, Wagner received the position of choir master at the theatre in Wurzburg. That same year, Wagner composed his first complete opera, Die

Feen, or, The Fairies, which was never produced until after Wagner’s death. In 1834, Wagner got a position as musical director at the opera house in Magdeburg, during which he wrote Das Liebesverbot, based on Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. Unfortunately, this show only got one showing as the theatre in Magdeburg collapsed financially, leaving Wagner with crippling debt. While at the Magdeburg theatre, Wagner met his wife, Wilhelmine “Minna” Planer, who helped him recover after the financial collapse. She helped him get a job in Konigsberg and they got married in November of 1836. This period of happiness, however, was very brief, as Minna left Wagner for another man in May of the very next year, only six months after getting married. In 1838, after Wagner had worked with Minna’s sister in a local opera company in Riga, he and Minna remarried and continued accruing debt. By 1839, the couple had to flee from Riga to avoid debt collectors. From then until 1842, Wagner made enough to get by in

Paris by writing articles and arranging operas by other composers. Wagner then moved to Dresden in

1842 because one of his shows was accepted for performance by the Dresden Court Theatre. The composer remained in Dresden for six years and landed a job as the Royal Saxon Court Conductor. His welcome in Germany ended all of a sudden when the May Uprising in Dresden, a political movement calling for a constitutional monarchy to rule a new, united German nation, occurred. Wagner detested this movement, and was considered a revolutionary to it. It was because of this that warrants were issued for his arrest, causing him to flee to Zurich in Switzerland. He would spend the next twelve years exiled from Germany, so he desperately wrote to his friend, Franz Liszt (1811-1886) to help him in staging and conducting his operas. Liszt agreed, and thus a partnership was formed. These progressive