And you can find an audio tour and essay on Wagner's
preludes and overtures at
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Titan of the 19th Century
As Beethoven was the dominant musical figure in the first half of the 19th century, so Richard Wagner (1813-1883) was in the second. His operas (or "music dramas," as they were often called to describe their synthesis of music and stagecraft) tapped into the very essence of romanticism, celebrating love, myth, heroism, and humanity's transcendence of nature in ways that were singularly provocative and profound. His music was immense, powerful, compelling: it inflamed the imagination of an era in which even the bourgeoisie craved extreme feelings and worshipped the sublime. Indeed, so great was Wagner's impact that it extended beyond the sphere of music to literature and philosophy. By the 1870s, and for some time after his death in 1883, he bestrode the world of European (and American) culture "like a colossus."
Wagner was viewed by his contemporaries as a great progressive. At a time when the work of Darwin and Wallace had brought the concept of evolution to the forefront of intellectual debate, Wagner was seen as a kind of culmination. His emotionally charged idiom was often referred to as the "Music of the Future," suggesting there was nothing beyond what he already had reached. Even today, knowing what did come after Wagner, legions of music lovers are willing to say that nothing yet has gone beyond him.
Visionary Artist
As a man, Wagner had plenty of flaws. He was vain, prejudiced, and egocentric. But as an artist, he was governed by a visionary insight into human character and emotion, as well as by an unerring instinct for what could be achieved on the stage and in musical sound. His early works carried forward the precepts of German romanticism and Parisian grand opera while boldly breaking new ground. His mature works, from the 1850s on, achieved an entirely new synthesis of musical and dramatic elements. Wagner developed a hauntingly sensuous musical language, advanced harmony and orchestration into new realms, and exerted a compelling influence on the course of music history.
The overtures and preludes to Wagner's operas are among the most brilliant and accomplished pieces of orchestral music written in the 19th century and afford a spectacular introduction to his work as a whole. One can find there, in concentrated form, the same incandescent expression and dramatic urgency as in the operas themselves. One can revel in the power of Wagner's scoring. There's a gloriously rich alchemy--utilizing large numbers of wind and brass instruments--that gives the orchestra an unprecedented opulence and depth of sonority, yet produces uncanny transparency, as well. In these essays, drawn from the richest vein of romanticism, Wagner created the modern orchestra and set the standard all subsequent composers have had to live up to.
Overtures and Preludes, performed by the Chicago Symphony
Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Barenboim
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Orchestral Music, performed by the Columbia Symphony
Orchestra, conducted by Bruno Walter
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Orchestral Music, Vol. 1, performed by the Philharmonia
Orchestra, conducted by Otto Klemperer
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Orchestral Music, Vol. 2, performed by the Philharmonia
Orchestra, conducted by Otto Klemperer
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Overtures and Preludes, performed by the London Philharmonic
Orchestra et al., conducted by Sir Adrian Boult
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Early Works
The first truly distinctive work to come from Wagner's pen was "Der fliegende Hollaender" ("The Flying Dutchman"), a revolutionary score in which the sweep of Wagner's musical ideas and the Teutonic power of his orchestration collided head-on with the Franco-Italian trappings of grand opera. The overture to "The Flying Dutchman" depicts a storm at sea much like one Wagner himself experienced a few years before he wrote the piece. The surging, heaving passages in the strings suggest the towering swells of a storm-tossed sea, while the urgent, echoing proclamations in horns and trumpets sound like calls of alarm from a ship in distress.
Like the Dutchman, the hero of Wagner's next opera, "Tannhaeuser," is a doomed man who can be redeemed only by the self-sacrificing love of a woman. The conflict at the heart of the opera is that between carnal love and spiritual love, and the music of the overture evokes these two poles with majestic force.
The opera "Lohengrin" marks a turning point in Wagner's development, a decisive step away from the conventions of grand opera toward the continuous music drama of "Tristan und Isolde" and the "Ring." The opera's luminous orchestral prelude, which makes groundbreaking use of divided strings, is richly romantic in feeling and has an emotive power quite new to the operatic sphere. The extraordinary prelude to Act III is a tour de force of a different color, depicting the exhilaration that follows the wedding of Lohengrin and Elsa.
"Der fliegende Hollaender," conducted by Christoph von
Dohnanyi
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"Tannhaeuser," conducted by Sir Georg Solti
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"Lohengrin," conducted by Rudolf Kempe
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The Most Tragic of Love Stories and a Warm, Human Comedy
Between 1857 and 1867, while he set aside the mammoth task of composing his "Ring" cycle (which would last a quarter of a century), Wagner turned his energies to two extraordinary projects--a love story of towering intensity based on a medieval epic by Gottfried von Strassburg, and a touchingly human comedy set in 16th-century Nuremberg. The love story was "Tristan und Isolde," the comedy "Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg." Wagner coined a new musical language when he wrote "Tristan" and entrusted the orchestra with a more important and more taxing part in the proceedings than it had ever had before. The music of the prelude to Act I of "Tristan" is perhaps the most potent evocation of elemental desire ever penned, while the opera's final scene is certainly the most powerful expression of rapture in all of music. Frequently joined as a concert offering, these two portions of the music drama are among the finest orchestral pages in the repertory.
If there's a flip side to the stormy and ultimately fatal passions of "Tristan und Isolde," it's the sunlit, if also bittersweet, celebration of love that comes in "Die Meistersinger," Wagner's only mature comedy. There is nothing more glorious in the orchestral repertory than the prelude to Act I, a rousing C-major joyride that delivers 10 minutes of pure exuberance and stirring lyricism, and sets the stage for the most warmly human of all Wagner's dramas.
"Tristan und Isolde," conducted by Karl Boehm
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"Tristan und Isolde," conducted by Wilhelm Furtwaengler
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"Tannhaeuser," "Tristan und Isolde" (excerpts), "Siegfried-Idyll,"
conducted by Herbert von Karajan
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"Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg," conducted by Herbert von
Karajan
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"Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg," conducted by Hans
Knappertsbusch
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In our next mailing, a discussion of Wagner's epic "Ring" cycle.