The Development of Certain Tendencies in Modern Opera / Thesis for the degree of Bachelor of Music

by Kathryn Eleanor Browne

IV. WAGNER.

Wagner objected to the sentimental Italian music. He considered Gluck only a musician of airs, and himself insisted on absolute equality of words and music. His "Trilogy" is the longest musical work in the world, containing 984,033 notes. He discarded formal arias, finales, separate movements, to a great extent choruses, whereever histrionic delineation did not demand them. He considered a full close or final cadence quaint and for usual formal melodies substituted declamatory recitative or speech song.

Gluck and Wagner brought back undying principles of dramatic worth. In the days of Bellini, Rossini and Donizetti, melody was supreme. The dramatic truth was lost sight of and the melody was not appropriate. In "William Tell" and "Der Freischutz" there was a step onwards towards the Wagner reform and a return to the first principles of dramatic art as applied to opera by the Bardi coterie. There was recitative, declamation and melody. Individualism was the prevailing tendency, and the success depends on the forcibleness of character development by means of the leitmotiv. Operatic art was here swaying between Wagnerism and the ancient Greek drama. This union of drama and music does away with the old absurd Italian form, in which the libretto was a mere skeleton, the situations unnatural and the music inappropriate and undramatic.

The Wagner texts were better and abolished concerted music which was unnatural, and he demanded distinctness in ennunciation, musical embodiment of emotional speech, melodic independence of the orchestra and rapid and natural action. The Italian libretto was merely an excuse for musical adornment, but the Wagnerian opera was a source of inspiration. Wagner translated every character, emotion, dramatic action, symbolic idea by a series of characteristic phrases. He joined motive to motive, developed with artistic skill a musical current rolling along in the orchestral accompaniment and ample in every word.

In his earlier works Wagner adhered to the lyrical conception of the opera. Speech was raised by stress of emotion into song with the orchestra used only as an accompaniment and, under this new system, effected an organization of instrumental and vocal forces. In "Das Rheingold" the orchestra is exalted to symphonic dignity with the traditional alternations of the formal song and recitative merged into free declamation. The symphonic treatment of the orchestra led to increased developmentt of leading motives. As symphonic music presupposes the use of musical themes, Wagner drew his themes not from the words sung by the characters but from the characters themselves, their thoughts, feelings and aspirations. In the love duet in "Die Walküre" the most delicious harmony is expressed.

Wagner was both a poet and a musician and combined poetry, music and pantomine painting. He is called the "reformer of opera", a "regenerator of modern drama". Wagner's great work aside from the leitmotiv was his work with recitative. Up to this time the recitative and the arias were dry, weak, barren and hampered every composer and poet. Up to his time the recitative aria and the ballet had undergone no organic change, though the aria had suffered many changes of fashion. He did not mean to sacrifice the beauty of sound in the Italian operas, but this had so far usurped the first place, while the dramatic motive which had inspired the invention of the opera. His works are not conspicuous for pure melody, for he considered the dramatic effect of chords and discords. He paid deference to the language employed and the vocal peculiarities of the people, for the German words were unintelligible when sung to the florid Italian tunes. He wrote the vocal parts of his lyric dramas to bring out the force of his poetry.

He gave new expression to new ideas. Peri, in "Eurydice", concealed an orchestra behind the scenes. In Monteverde's "Orfeo", thirty-six different instruments were relegated to each personage. Wagner assigned an instrument or set of instruments to each person. His typical phrases are most interesting. He pictures the giants, in "Das Rheingold", with loud heavy octaves, the Nibelung, tricksters and schemers, with music of a descending figure, twothirds the interval of a seventh, the melodies of the Rhine with characteristic figures depicting slow undulation of water in its depths, flux and reflux of element, ripples on the surface and the motion of the swimmers.

His "Rheingold" music is truly scenic. It begins with a single deep tone and then introduces instruments of a lighter color. The graduated augmentation of the wavy accompaniment and the doubly delineative spirit reflects the sinless quiet of the Golden Age. There are themes for mental states and the evil Alberich is represented by abrupt jerky music. The orchestra discourses mournfully of the renunciation of love. Loga is depicted by fitful chromatic phrases which crackle and flash thru the orchestra. The sword phrase consists of major harmonies over sustained pedal point, and the thunderstorm of rushing figures in bass, and staccato lightning in short rapid figures in lighter instruments, crashing of the wind in chromatic phrases, a hammering rythm for the Nibelung. Siegfried's boyhood is pictured as a wild forest lad with a hunting call, and when he gathers pieces of the spear the music accompaniment is in broken rythm.

In "Parsifal" the music depicts little of external things. In "Tannhaüser" there are fancies which Wagner wished to float thru the minds of the audience and the Pilgrim's Chant swells and disappears. In "Tristan and Isolde" the prelude represents the spiritual progress of the tragedy. The suffering of the wounded Tristan is shown by a theme of descending half steps and a closing cadence of short phrases which stand for the love glance is a downward leap of the seventh. The symbol of death is expressed with a sudden and unprepared change from A flat to A. The music consists of a few phrases which unfold themselves over and over again in a variety of combinations with continually changing instrumental color. "Die Meistersinger" prelude delineates the characteristic traits of the personages, and the symphonic introduction indicates the elements of the plot, the progress in its developement and the outcome. The two classes of melodies are broadly distinguished in external physiognomy and emotional essence, at first consecutively, then in conflict and finally in harmonious and contented union. The solid old burghers of Nuremburg, a little vain, are pictured by strong simple tunes with sequences of the intervals of the simple diatonic scale, strongly and simply harmonized, a trifle pompous in opposition to the passion of the lovers displayed. These themes differ in every respect, melodic, rythmic, and harmonic, and also in their treatment. The lover's theme is chromatic, the rythme are less regular and more eager by syncopation. This is harmonized with greater warmth and set for the instruments with greater passion.