Week 2 of social distancing, and I’ve realized there’s only so many times I can walk around my neighborhood. Hopefully this self-isolation helps us protect others and get back to normal sooner.

 

At the recommendation of Nick, one of my classmates, I’ll be talking about Richard Wagner this week. He was a German Romantic period composer who was kind of definitely a revolutionary and led an exciting life amid writing operas. And not just any operas – ones that revolutionized Western music through Wagner’s exploration of more musical drama. It would come as no surprise that he was on the more radical side of the “War of the Romantics,” opposite of Brahms and both Schumanns.

 

As a child, Wagner was different from other composers in that he didn’t show interest in music until his teens, and only then as an expression for drama and plays. He eventually enrolled in music lessons, although he was impatient and mainly taught himself piano, composition, and plays.

 

Wagner also was not an instant success. His first and second operas were flops during his lifetime, so he ended up conducting a theatre troupe and marrying one of the actresses, Minna Planer. Even though he presented a “gruff, austere image, he was a wisecracking, energetic womanizer who dressed like Graffiti Bridge-era Prince” (Head). So quite an eccentric character for his time!

 

After failing to break into the Paris music scene and barely keeping afloat financially, Wagner managed to write Rienzi and The Flying Dutchman (early Pirates of the Caribbean reference?), which were his first major successes in Germany. The rest of his works were quite popular despite persistent criticism.

 

However, Wagner was controversial in several ways. First, he was exiled from Dresden for his revolutionary activity within the court opera and the failed German socialist revolution of 1848-49. He also wrote a bunch of prose on social and artistic reform. He completed Lohengrin, but his exile made it a bit tricky to perform; luckily, his friend Liszt stepped up to organize and conduct the premiere in Germany. What a nice guy.

 

Second, Wagner was introducing new types of music to the European opera scene. One of his most significant contributions is popularizing the leitmotif: a musical theme that represents a character or event and its development in an opera. This is extensively used in by modern composers – Star Wars theme for sure, and Hedwig’s Theme from Harry Potter!

 

Third, Wagner had a pretty wild personal life. During his first marriage, he had a brief affair with a married woman named Mathilde Wesendonck. Unfortunately, his then-wife intercepted one of their love letters; needless to say, this experience led to separation and also the opera Tristan and Isolde.

 

This embarrassing affair caused Wagner to leave Germany, but his flippant attitude toward money led to high debt and fleeing jail. Luckily, King Louis II of Bavaria loved Wagner’s music and commissioned him to finish his major work, The Ring of the Nibelung, a tetralogy of operas. Note: the link is just a tidbit because the entire thing is 15 hours.

 

The Ring was the height of Wagner’s style and maturity as a composer. He developed a belief that opera would become “music drama,” directed more toward the people than the elite. He wove in leitmotifs that tied the music to character development. The full work took him 26 years to complete and perform.

 

During this time of composition, Wagner received much opposition to his wild way of life. At this point, he was a professional at squandering money and living off others, he attempted to interfere in Bavarian government, and he became the lover of his conductor’s wife, Cosima. *sips tea* And oh, by the way, Cosima was Liszt’s daughter. And she gave birth to three of his children before divorcing her husband and marrying Wagner. Wagner = certified player.

 

Hence, Wagner left Germany once again to avoid this scandal. Fortunately, the Bavarian king still supported him financially, especially in helping him build his own concert hall in Bayreuth for the grand performance of The Ring. Wagner died of a heart attack at age 70 in the height of his fame, supposedly from the stress of arguing with Cosima about his interest in another woman.

 

The final and most important part of Wagner’s controversy is his anti-Semitic beliefs. These were well-known, but the controversy surrounds how much of those beliefs infiltrated his music. Some say that it was separate. However, others point to Hitler’s favoritism of Wagner’s music and the unofficial banning of Wagner’s compositions in Israel as evidence that his beliefs are perpetrated in his music. Either way, his music is tarnished by this association with Nazism.

 

Although Wagner was controversial, no one can dispute how his style revolutionized Western music. He elevated German music to what many view as its most emotional and harmonic level. His music continues to influence the modern world today, either through his explorations or the reactions against them.

 

(Apologies for the long post. He was really fascinating!)

Here are some additional pieces for listening:

Symphony in C Major

Parsifal

 

And here is our musical meme of the week!

 

Here are my sources:

Cooke, Deryck V. “Richard Wagner.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 9 Feb. 2020, www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Wagner-German-composer.

Head, Tom. “Six Interesting Facts About Richard Wagner.” CMUSE, CMUSE.org, 1 July 2018, www.cmuse.org/six-interesting-facts-about-richard-wagner/.

Ross, Daniel. “Wagner: 15 Facts about the Great Composer.” Classic FM, Global, 29 Oct. 2012, www.classicfm.com/composers/wagner/guides/wagner-facts-great-composer/.