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Chapter Twenty Three Outline Chapter 23: Class of 1813: Wagner and Verdi I. Wagner A. Introduction 1. Few artists have had the impact across a diversity of fields that Wagner had. 2. In addition to a powerful musical imagination and impressive technique, he wrote prolifically about his views, which aids a study of the composer. B. Art and Revolution: Wagner’s Early Career 1. Wagner’s musical career had a slower start than most of the others we have studied. 2. His third opera, Rienzi (1838–40), was the most successful of the early works. a. It is similar to French grand opera. b. Wagner had wanted it to premiere in Paris, but it was only accepted in Dresden. c. While in Paris he became familiar with Berlioz’s music. 3. Soon after the premiere, Wagner was offered a prestigious job as Royal Court Kapellmeister, which enabled him to supervise production of his next opera: Der fliegende Holländer (1843). a. This was his first opera on a subject from German legend. b. It is considered his first masterpiece. 4. With the Dresden Uprising (1849), Wagner had to leave the city. He had been drawn into revolutionary politics. He wouldn’t return to Germany for almost fifteen years. 5. Two more grand Romantic operas followed: Tannhäuser and Lohengrin. a. These two operas prompted Brendel’s New German School. 6. Dutchman dealt with a phantom sea captain, but Tannhäuser was based on a historical person from the Middle Ages (see Chapter 2). a. Wagner contrasts the religious pilgrims’ music (choralelike in melody and texture) with the seductive music of Venus. b. The knight is ultimately redeemed by the sacrificial love of the virginal Elisabeth. c. In the “Rome monologue” in the final act, Wagner introduces what he later calls unendliche Melodie, a seamless stream in which every note is thematic and meaningful. 1) The orchestra supports the web of emotions, ideas, and associations with “reminiscence motifs.” 7. In a manner similar to unendliche Melodie, the prelude of Lohengrin does not consist of contrasting sections but works toward complete formal unity. C. The Artwork of the Future, Modeled on the Imagined Past 1. Wagner was the first composer to write his own librettos. 2. No Wagner opera premiered between 1850 and 1865. a. He spent the years from 1848 to 1853 thinking about his art, which produced significant changes. b. For several years he lived in Switzerland, writing and studying contemporary thinkers and activists. c. Schopenhauer was an important influence at this time. 3. Wagner developed an idea that the ancient Greeks had united the arts, but that these had subsequently split into different areas. He saw a reunification of them in Gesamtkunstwerk (total or united art work). a. As the arts split, people looked to Christianity for solace. Wagner saw this as weakness. D. From Theory into Practice: The Ring of the Nibelung 1. The result of the time spent theorizing was the largest musical entity in the Western literate tradition: The Ring of the Nibelung. a. It took Wagner twenty-five years to write. b. It takes about fifteen hours to perform. 2. Wagner ties together the story of the German folk hero Siegfried with the history of the gods (Medieval Icelandic epics known as Eddas). 3. After beginning with Siegfried’s story, Wagner realized he needed to begin the story earlier: a preexisting musical reality that connected everything. 4. He backed up to the point where Wotan becomes the central figure (in Die Walküre). He committed the “original sin” by embedding his spear in the World Ash Tree. a. The rest of the Ring (destruction of the gods) is atonement for this action. 5. Wagner wrote the “poems” to the operas before composing. E. Wagnerian Leitmotifs 1. The preferred genre for these works is “music drama,” not “opera.” 2. Wagner created ways to unite the music and ideas over a period of several days. a. There is a large-scale key structure at work, as well as tonalities associated with various elements. 3. He did not write the usual “numbers” but let the action continually evolve. 4. He used leitmotifs (which can be very small) to signal more than the words were telling the audience. a. More than 100 leitmotifs appear in the Ring. b. Many authors have compiled them, beginning with Hans von Wolzogen. 5. The motifs can signify many things, including characters, places, objects, emotions, and even abstractions such as “fate.” 6. They can appear in the orchestra or vocal parts. 7. Oftentimes leitmotifs sound similar; this is a way to impart the web of interrelations that Wagner presents. a. A noteworthy example is the simplistic E-flat major triad that opens the entire cycle. It takes on various meanings as the cycle proceeds. F. Words, Orchestra, and Theater 1. Wagner struggled with verse structure for the poetry. He was not satisfied with modern verse structure and decided to invent a speech-melody of his own. 2. He based his poetry on the idea of Stabreim, an old bardic system of rhyming with letters. 3. The result has not received complete satisfaction for modern critics, but Wagner believed it to be a significant part of the work. 4. The use of the poetry and leitmotifs contribute to the “sea of harmony” that he created, swathing the audience in as many aural arenas as possible. 5. The harmony wanders through a broad spectrum of tonal centers, rarely stopping by avoiding authentic cadences. 6. His works demanded new instruments in the orchestra and extraordinary staying power from the singers. 7. Wagner also wanted a new theater structure for them, which was made possible when King Ludwig II came to the throne in the mid1870s. The result was Bayreuth. G. The Ultimate Experience: Tristan und Isolde 1. Thinking that he would never be able to have the Ring performed, Wagner took a break while composing Siegfried and wrote two other works: Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger. 2. The story of Tristan comes from the Middle Ages and was rather famous. 3. In this work, Wagner wished to express longing and desire in music. The obvious answer was to create tension and delay resolution. 4. The tension is palpable from the opening prelude, which features the “Tristan” chord. H. How Far Can You Stretch a Dominant? 1. Wagner’s real tonal innovation was not the Tristan chord but the failure to resolve the dominant seventh to which it moves. 2. In Act II, after spending the night together, Tristan and Isolde sing a song cursing the sunrise. a. The Medieval “dawn song” is known in German as the Tagelied. b. In the third section of this segment, Wagner presents one motive twenty-eight times, ever moving the harmony up a half-step while the bass descends by the same interval. c. When the bass finally reaches the F# (dominant) to which the scene has been headed, Isolde sings A# (leading tone) and resolves it to a high B, but the harmony underneath is not B major but instead the seventh of a dominant ninth as the two lovers are discovered. 3. The third act ends with the famous Liebestod in which Isolde is transfigured by an orgiastic death by love. a. The music recalls the scene discussed above, but this time resolves properly in the most obvious authentic cadence in the entire opera. b. Isolde’s soul passes into “night’s wonder world” where it joins Tristan’s. I. Life and Art: Beyond Good and Evil 1. The moral conventions that Wagner disobeys in Tristan und Isolde (and elsewhere) in part reflect what was going on in his own life. a. Wagner had many affairs during both of his marriages. b. The affair with Mathilde Wesendonck looked similar to the love triangle in Tristan. c. He openly lived with Liszt’s daughter, Cosima, while she was still married to Hans von Bülow. 2. Wagner believed a great artist should be allowed to do what he needed to do to inspire his art. a. This derives partly from Nietzsche’s famous “beyond good and evil” comment that artists were not subject to the same rules as everyone else. 3. Wagner frequently explores the forbidden and suppressed. a. Freud studied these ideas. 4. He was very persuasive at convincing his listeners of his views. Many of these are scary: a. German identity leading to xenophobia b. Bigotry (against Jews, enlightened French, etc.) c. Against internationalism and rationality 5. The end of Die Meistersinger illuminates Wagner’s aggressive nationalism. J. The Last Opera: Parsifal 1. Parsifal is based on a Medieval knight who is involved with the search for the Holy Grail. 2. The knight Parsifal has a task to redeem, and the opera is obsessed with community and purity. a. Some see it as a Christian opera. 3. The special orchestral effects in the work were made possible by Wagner’s opera house (Bayreuth) and its sunken/hidden orchestra. 4. It is an emotionally compelling musical experience. II. Verdi A. Verdi: Upholding the Italian Tradition 1. Verdi and Wagner were born in the same year. 2. Wagner’s influence has made him seem the more important composer according to the way music history has been written, but that does not mean he is better. 3. During his lifetime, Verdi was generally the more famous composer. 4. Verdi saw a major distinction between the North (“sons of Bach”) and South (“sons of Palestrina). 5. Germans had dominated instrumental music and Italians vocal, but Wagner changed that. a. Verdi was concerned about the decline of Italian music. B. Early Verdi: The Galley Years 1.
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