Richard Wagner German Romantic Era Opera Composer (1813-1883)

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Hey Kids, Meet Richard Wagner German Romantic Era Opera Composer (1813-1883) Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig, Germany, on May 22, 1813. He was the ninth son of Carl Friedrich Wagner and Johanna Rosine. Richard's father died of typhus six months after his birth. His mother then married painter, actor, and poet, Ludwig Geyer, and the family moved to Dresden. Richard took an interest in the plays in which his step- father performed, and Richard sometimes even partici- pated in the plays alongside of him. In late 1820, Richard received some piano instruction from a Latin teacher. As a teen, Richard's teacher said that he would "torture the piano in a most abominable fashion." Despite what his teacher thought, Richard enjoyed playing the piano, and began to compose music as a teenager. In 1831, he attended Leipzig University. He was impacted greatly by famous musicians, such as Beethoven, Mozart, and Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient. In 1833 Wagner became a choir master in Würzburg, Germany. Within a year of obtaining this position, Wagner composed his first opera, Die Feen (The Fairies). This opera was not performed until after his death. Between 1857-1864, he wrote the opera Tristan and Isolde, a tragic love story. Many musicians consider Tristan and Isolde to be the beginning of modern classical music. Because of Wagner's strong political views and his poor money management, Wagner had to move often, moving to Russia, France, Switzerland, and then back to Germany. Even though his life was turbulent, he produced some of his most famous works during this time. Wilhelm Richard Wagner died on February 13, 1883, at the age of 69 while visiting Venice, Italy. His was buried in Bayreuth, Germany, where there is still an annual musical festival that performs his operas. Richard Wagner is best-known for Tristan and Isolde, The Ride of the Valkyries and Bridal Chorus, also commonly called Here Comes the Bride. TM www.makingmusicfun.net.

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Wagner in the "Cult of Art in Nazi Germany"
Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons History: Faculty Publications and Other Works Faculty Publications 2-1-2013 Wagner in the "Cult of Art in Nazi Germany" David B. Dennis Loyola University Chicago, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/history_facpubs Part of the History Commons Author Manuscript This is a pre-publication author manuscript of the final, published article. Recommended Citation Dennis, David B.. Wagner in the "Cult of Art in Nazi Germany". WWW2013: Wagner World Wide (marking the Wagner’s bicentennial) at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, , : , 2013. Retrieved from Loyola eCommons, History: Faculty Publications and Other Works, This Conference Proceeding is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Publications at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in History: Faculty Publications and Other Works by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. © David B. Dennis 2013 Richard Wagner in the “Cult of Art” of Nazi Germany A Paper for the Wagner Worldwide 2013 Conference University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC January 30-February 2, 2013 David B. Dennis Professor of History Loyola University Chicago In his book on aesthetics and Nazi politics, translated in 2004 as The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany, Eric Michaud, Director of Studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, wrote that National Socialist attention to the arts was intended “to present the broken [German] Volk with an image of its ‘eternal Geist’ and to hold up to it a mirror capable of restoring to it the strength to love itself.” 1 I came upon this, among other ideas of Michaud, when preparing the conceptual framework for my own book, Inhumanities: Nazi Interpretations of Western Culture, just released by Cambridge University Press.
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rg Richard WAGNER Symphony in C major Wilhelm Richard Wagner (22 May 1813 – 13 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, and conductor. Wagner's stepfather, actor and playwright Ludwig Geyer, involved the young boy in his plays, and inspired Wagner to write a drama, Leubald, at 13. While Wagner did have some musical education at the time, his inability to set the text to music led him to further study composition. After publishing his Op. 1 – the Piano Sonata in B-flat major (1831) – while enrolled at Leipzig University, Wagner would compose his first and only symphony, his first completed opera, and held positions as a choirmaster, and then a musical director in Magdeburg. Unfortunately, the opera house in Magdeburg would close in 1836 due to a financial collapse, leaving Wagner bankrupt. He married a leading actress from the theatre and left Germany, escaping from creditors and making scant livings in numerous cities. After completing his opera, Reinzi (1840), Wagner moved back to Germany, but his return lasted only until 1849, as he once again had to flee – this time to escape an arrest warrant after participating as a revolutionary in the May Uprising in Dresden. Forced to stay out of Germany for the next 12 years, Wagner and his wife moved to Switzerland. As his wife fell into a depression and Wagner had no regular income, he fell into ill-health from his grim situation and struggled to compose. Instead, Wagner began writing essays, including "The Artwork of the Future" (1849) in which he coined the term, Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art"), a concept of a musical work which synthesizes nearly all forms of art.
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