Tell about the changes that Wagner was to make.
Give an account of his early operas.
Why did he go to Paris?
Describe Rienzi, The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin.
LESSON XL.
Richard Wagner’s Music Dramas.
Other Schools.
Wagner’s Theory of the Music Drama.—Lohengrin, like The Flying Dutchman, was transitional in character and led into Wagner’s third manner. It was his last opera; all his later works were known as music dramas. In these he pursued unhesitatingly the logical conclusions of the theories which he expounded at great length in his controversial writings, though he was far from being always consistent with himself. Thus he reasoned that since in the spoken drama but one speaker is heard at a time, the same practice should prevail in the music drama, which would naturally do away with all concerted music, choruses, etc. This rule he observed in The Ring of the Nibelungen, but he wisely abandoned it in his later works. In Die Meistersinger he also failed to follow his theory that mythical and legendary subjects were the only suitable material for the music drama. Briefly stated, his ultimate conclusion was as follows: that the art-work of the future, as he called it, should consist of a synthesis of all the arts. Music, poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, he asserted, had exhausted all that was possible to them as separate arts; a higher plane could be reached hereafter only by a combination which should gain unity by subordination to a single principle. This principle he found in poetry. Beethoven, he argued, had felt the insufficiency of music alone to express his deepest inspiration, and for that reason had incorporated in his last and greatest symphony a choral movement to the words of Schiller’s “Ode to Joy.” In the music drama, therefore, the scene painter replaces the artist and the architect, the actor by plastic poses the sculptor, while the musician must allow his music no form but that dictated by the poet in his verses. He ascribed the thrilling effect of the Greek drama to such a union of the arts and this it was his aim to revive through his own works.
The Leading Motive.—The part assigned by the Greek dramatists to the chorus who expounded and commented on the events of the play was in his scheme transferred to the orchestra. This he did by means of the Leitmotiv (leading motive). A leitmotiv is a characteristic theme or harmonic progression associated with each of the Dramatis Personæ and which appears with such modification of mode, rhythm, or any of its component parts as the dramatic situation demands. It is not confined to personages alone; in The Ring of the Nibelung, for instance, the stolen gold, the ring formed from it, the sword which plays such an important part in Die Walküre and in Siegfried all have their corresponding motives. It is through these motives that Wagner is able to give his orchestra an all but articulate speech and to weld the music drama into an organic whole. By their transformation and development he succeeds in indicating psychological states and changes as well as material conditions and objects. Reminiscent themes of a somewhat similar nature had been used as far back as Mozart and had been employed more freely by composers of the Romantic school, notably by Weber in Der Freischütz and Euryanthe, but they were undeveloped and elementary in character. Berlioz in his Fantastic Symphony was the first to conceive a typical theme and to alter it in logical accordance with the progression of his program, but he did not adopt the practice in his operas.
Wilhelm Richard Wagner.