1. Wagner was a close friend of the revolutionary-anarchist
Michail Bakunin (1814-76), who fled to Russia in 1849, where he fostered
the anarchist movement of political terrorism. Wagner's inflammatory speeches
and articles at the height of the Dresden insurrection had of course
resulted in a total break with his employer, the Saxon king Friedrich-August
II, after the King rejected Wagner's call to himself lead the revolution.
Typical of Wagner's articles was an anonymous piece in the Dresden
Volksblätter of April 8, 1849, in which the muse of the
revolution proclaims:
"I will break the power of the mighty, of law, of property. I will destroy
every illusion that has power over man—the domination of the one over
the
many, the dead over the living, of matter over spirit. Down to its very
memory I will destroy every trace of this insane order, the compact of lies,
worry, hypocrisy, want, sorrow, trickery, and tears. Two peoples there are
henceforth: the one that follow me, the other that resists me. The one I lead
to happiness; over the other I tread, crushing as I go. For I am Revolution!"
It should be noted that after the collapse, a "Wanted Dead or Alive" poster
of Wagner was distributed throughout the German Confederation. [GJL]
2. The concept of das Volk as a distinct entity had arisen in the
waning days of the Holy Roman Empire to impart a sense of unity in a "Germany"
that consisted of literally hundreds of states. France, Spain, and Great
Britain had formed strong national states, while Germany (and Italy) were
political kaleidoscopes. Under Napoleon, the hundreds had been mediated
to a handful, but only Austria and Prussia escaped being out-and-out
satellites
of Napoleon, and both appealed to the "folk" during the Wars of
Liberation.
3. The expression "storm and stress" has a particular meaning within the
context
of German culture. Storm and Stress—Sturm und Drang—refers
to
the onset of the romantic movement in Germany. German literature, the drama
especially,
had been written in slavish imitation of French models. In England, France,
and Spain,
there was but one sovereign; in Germany there were hundreds: petty princelings
trying
to imitate Louis XIV. German aristocrats spoke French to each other. (When the
Elector
of Hanover became King of Great Britain as George I, he never bothered to
learn
English. The government was conducted in French, which Walpole and the other
ministers
spoke fluently.) The plays given in court theaters were either in French
(Racine, et al.)
or dismal German copies of the French style.
4. Wagner was unaware of the earlier "study" for the 9th, the Choral
Fantasy.
In contrast to Wagner's view that the 9th had pointed toward the future, the
gifted,
conservative music critic Eduard Hanslick (1825-1904) later wrote "Beethoven's
9th
straddles the course of music like a colos-sus shouting 'Thus far but no
father!'."
Wagner ridiculed Hanslick through the character of Beckmesser, the pedantic
ninny
in The Mastersingers of Nurem-berg. In the original draft, Sixtus
Beckmesser
was named "Hans Lick"; Wagner then invited Eduard Hanslick to a dramatic
reading of the
libretto. "Mr. Nice Guy" Wagner assuredly wasn't! Also unknown to
Wagner—not
discovered until
the 20th century—was a late coversation book of the totally deaf
Beethoven
in which he states the vocal finale of the 9th had been "a great mistake" and
that he planned to replace it with a instrumental one. [GJL]
5. These four strongly influenced Wagner's own early works. For example, he modeled his first opera, The Sylphs (Die Feen), 1833, on the sylvan style of Weber. His second, The Ban on Love (Das Liebesverbot), 1836, was a setting of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure in a tuneful style à la Rossini. His third, the highly successful Rienzi, 1840, was an adaption of Bulwer Lytton's historical novel in the grand-opera style of Meyerbeer. And, in 1847, he won more success with his own drastic revision of the music and drama of Gluck's Iphigenia in Aulis, an opera based on the play by Racine.
6. Rather than take issue with Wagner's critique, Rossini probably would have
agreed.
He boasted that he could "make an aria out of a laundry list." When Wagner
went to Paris
for the production of Tannhäuser, he and Rossini were on the best
of
terms. Wagner addressed the elder composer as "Maestro," and pointed out that
Rossini's
last opera, William Tell (based on Schiller's play), incorporated many
of the
prescepts laid down in Opera and Drama.
7. While a starving unknown in his Paris days, Wagner had sought help from
this
German-born, Italian-trained composer who at that time reigned over the
musical life
of the French capital. Wagner felt that Meyerbeer had treated him with
"unbearable condescension" and thereupon became the Parisian's deadly foe.
8. Some of Wagner's characters resemble Greek archetypes—i.e. Brünnhilde = Antigone.
9. Wagner's theories on the role of tone-speech in Greek tragedy show up in
Friedrich Nietzsche's first book, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of
Music
(1872). This work is a strange blend of ideas culled from Schopenhauer and
Wagner
combined with Nietzsche's own theories about the ancient Greeks. It defines
his
now famous dictum distinction between the Apollinian and Dionysian
viewpoints—essentially the difference between classicism and
romanticism. In
Greek mythology, Apollo represented reason, lucid wisdom, judgment, planned
growth,
as well as artistic mastery in poetry and music. Dionysus represented
fertility,
passion, intoxication, natural growth, as well as artistic inspiration in
drama.
Nietzsche believed that the two viewpoints found a perfect blending in the
Greek
dramatic festival, thanks to the added music of tone-speech. Further, he
believed
the synthesis was born anew in Wagner's mature works.
10. It seems strange that Wagner, being a consummate man of the theater, would have ignored Goethe's fellow Klassiker, J. C. Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805). Outside the German-speaking areas, Schiller's plays have a far wider audience than Goethe's. Maria Stuart is virtually the only German play of the 18th Century in repertory in the U.S. Verdi made operas out of almost all Schiller's plays. Not as many of Schiller's poems were given musical settings by the great masters; however, Schubert's setting of The Gods of Greece and The Diver are two of the most famous German Lieder. [GJL]
11. Wagner's scores carefully note many key gestures along with the musical annotations and set descriptions. He once said that—when in the grip of inspiration—he would conceive of a scene's music, words, and gestures all at once.
12. Virtually every post-Wagnerian opera composer up to World War I
experimented with
some or all of the Opera and Drama reforms. Most faithful to the
Wagnerian system was
Engelbert
Humperdinck (1854-1921), whose six operas are settings of Grimm's fairy tales
using massive Wagnerian orchestration. Wagner entrusted his son's musical
education to
Humperdinck. Hänsel und Gretel (1893) is his best work [and
the only one still performed—[GJL].
13. If one refers to The Chronological Context, he'll see that
the text for Twighlight of the Gods was, for all practical purposes,
finished more than two years before Opera and Drama. What Wagner had
then was
nearly three texts fashioned
in accord with the techniques of music-drama and one crafted employing every
feature of grand opera à la Meyerbeer. Twilight of the
Gods
has them all: magic potions, the stately procession of
Siegfried's cortege, the chorus of warriors, the Rhine overflowing its
banks and inundating the stage (!!), and finally the whole universe
consumed in flames (!!!). There's no opera grander than
Götterdämmerung.
Plaudite, amici, commœdia finita est! [GJL]
14. Yet another overview of the cycle holds that The Ring is a gigantic symphony, with Rhilegold as the introduction, Valkyrie as the adagio, Siefried as the scherzo, and Twilight of the Gods as the final movement.
15. Cooke is best known for his two "completions" of Mahler's Tenth Symphony, so brilliantly dissected by the (late) musicologist William Malloch.
16.The orchestra for The Ring was of unprecedented size for the opera houses of the 19th Century: 113 instruments, plus 18 small, medium, and large "tuned" anvils for Rhinegold and wind and thunder machines for Valkyrie. Of the 113 instruments, there are 16 first violins, 16 second violins, 12 violas, 12 cellos, 8 double basses 7 harps; 8 horns, 3 trumpets, 1 bass trumpet, 3 trombones, 1 contra-bass trombone, 3 flutes, 2 piccolos, 2 tenor tubas, 4 bass tubas (an instrument invented by Wagner); 3 clarinets, 1 bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, 1 English horn; 1 timpani (with 2 players), side drum, cymbals, tam-tam, triangle, and glockenspiel. The full score of Valkyrie has more than a million notes.
17. Shaw's other Ring symbols (apart from those in Valkyrie) include Rhinemaidens: primitive peoples for whom "resources" represent only natural beauty; Alberich: a new bourgeois captain of industry; the Dwarves: slaves of the new money power; the Giants: agrarian laborers; the Gods: the aristocracy; the Gold: capital; the Ring: money's "magic" power.
18. Richard Strauss's tone poem on Zarathustra supplied the music that opens the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Delius's Mass of Life is also based on Nietzsche's work, as is the alto solo in the fourth movement of Mahler's Third Symphony. (Nietzsche is the only philosopher of import who was also a composer. As a young man, he turned out a number of small-scale works, mainly songs. But even in maturity, he took time away from his philosophical writings to compose "Hymn to Life": a large-scale work for full orchestra, chorus, & soloists, to a text by Lou von Salomé. Interestingly, Nietzsche's compositions show a markèd influence from Robert Schumann & nothing at all from Wagner. - GJL.)
19. Great Britain has produced a good many famous Wagnerians. We've noted G.B. Shaw and H.S. Chamberlain. But also noteworthy are Winifred Wagner, wife of Wagner's son, Siegfried; Ernest Newman, the most eminent of Wagner's biographers; Robert Donington, prominent among the psychologists who have made Wagner their specialty. In addition, there are such renowned British illustrators as Aubrey Beardsley and Arthur Rackham and such literary giants as James Joyce and T.S. Eliot. And of course there's comedienne Anna Russell, a Wagnerian soprano at one time, whose recorded spoof of The Ring is even publicly quoted in lectures by Wagner's grand-daughter, Friedelind.
20. Perhaps the calmest evaluation of Wagner's anti-Semitism is offered by Bryan Magee in his persuasive little book, Aspects of Wagner (Penguin, 1969). Magee views Wagner's reaction against "Jewish influences" as part of his overall dislike of the cosmopolitan, Parisian style and his championing of distinct styles of cultural nationalism and of each nation's "folk spirit."
21. Technically, Wagner considered The Ring "a trilogy with a prologue" or "three evenings and a pre-evening." But it's easier just to call the four works a tetralogy.
22. This stance of the romantic artist, 180 degrees away from the status quo, continues among neo-romantics today. For example: in the rigid, machined 1950's, art took on a look and sound that seemed thrown-together, accidental, abstract. In the anarchic '60's we returned to an art of hard edges, careful calculation, complete orchestra, and literal representation. A modern romantic view of art's function sees the artist helping to "balance the persOnality of society" by supplying the ingredients missing at any one time. According to this view, art's function is primarily one of social and psychological therapy, filling the gaps left as humanity retreats farther and farther from its original "complete" state: the state of nature.