How the Wizard Changed Opera
When Wagner reached his full power, he composed drama rather than opera in the old sense.
His music explained the words and action and expressed the state of mind of the character.
The melodies are used very much like the theme in a sonata. These leit-motifs (leading motives) are usually carried, as we told you, in the weavings of his wonderful orchestral webs. This theme or leit-motif or name tag, is tossed from instrument to instrument in numberless entrancing ways. Sometimes he uses a flickering theme for flames as in the fire music of The Valkyrie or glorious chimes or trumpetings as in Parsifal to cast a holy spell; but, whatever he uses, he charms and holds you spellbound.
He combines the counterpoint of the 16th century masters, with a most modern feeling for harmony, inherited from the classic Germans. He used harmony in a new way with a freedom it never before had reached, and pointed the way for modern composers of today.
As the Wizard, Wagner throws a glamor over the most mystic happening, as when Siegmund, in Die Valkyrie, withdraws the Sword from the tree; or in the most commonplace fact as when Eva tells Hans Sachs that she has a nail in her shoe. In The Meistersinger, you can always tell that he is making fun of Beckmesser, because his name tag shows him to be petty and ridiculous.
Although Wagner’s music is rich, very clear to us and beautiful, in his day it seemed complicated and discordant, because of its great volume and sonority, the result of the perfect part-writing.
For the first time, he makes the brasses of equal importance to the string and wind instruments. It is thrilling to hear the trombones and his beautiful use of trumpets. He used many of Berlioz’s ideas in muffling horns and added new instruments, too, among them, the bass clarinet and the English horn (cor anglais), which is a tenor oboe and not a horn at all!
Wagner had a beautiful way of dividing up the parts for violins and other instruments into smaller choirs which answered each other and with which he could get special effects. For example, the Prelude of Lohengrin is probably the nearest thing in shimmering music to what the angels must play, so heavenly is it. Here he divides the violins into many parts and it is far more beautiful than if they all played the same thing. Thus, he gave more value to the instruments and greatly improved the orchestra.
His preludes in which you hear the leading motives or name tags, are a table of contents for what follows.