Page 186 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

184 COMPLETE ART WORK

population. Wagner sought to originally called Siegfrieds Tod
create an artistic experience with (“Siegfried’s death”), led to him
religious, social, and ethical aspects. expanding it backward, adding
Such an artwork would gain more and more prehistory in each
yet further resonance with its additional work.
audience, he argued, by being This process also necessitated I shall never write an
based on subjects rooted deep in the development of “leitmotif”—a Opera more. As I have no
their unconscious, ideally myth. technique latent in his works of the wish to invent an arbitrary
In his new “music dramas,” as his 1840s but raised in The Ring to a title for my works, I will
works became known, he would be level of extraordinary complexity call them Dramas.
able to harness the power of music and sophistication. This method Richard Wagner
to explore the inner workings of allowed Wagner to weave together
his characters. Unlike with the continuous acts over large spans
predominant forms of opera, in but also meant that the orchestra
which musical concerns and, in the could begin to offer “commentary”
worst cases, the vanity of singers, on the action, much as the chorus
were primary considerations, here had done in ancient Greek drama.
it would be the drama that would Wagner finally completed his with conversation-like directness
define the form of the music. text for the cycle by 1852, and he (using punchy alliterative verse
began composing the music shortly called Stabreim), while the
Composing the world afterward, without any realistic orchestra provides commentary.
The work that came closest to this prospect of the works ever being For the “first day” of the cycle,
aim was a cycle of operas, Der Ring performed. Das Rheingold, which Die Walküre (“The Valkyrie,” 1856),
des Nibelungen (“The ring of the Wagner called a “preliminary Wagner created music of far greater
Nibelung”), based on a mixture of evening” to the main drama, came sensuality and warmth, in part
Norse and Germanic mythology. first and was the nearest Wagner because this installment added
It was not initially conceived as a came to realizing the theoretical humans into the tale, specifically
tetralogy (a cycle of four works), but ideal laid out in his essays. the long-lost twins Siegmund and
Wagner’s inability to progress with The opera’s cast of Norse gods, Sieglinde, who fall in love during
the subject as a single opera, dwarves, and giants communicate the course of the first act. (The

Timeline for the production of The Ring
The Ring was made up of four operas, Key
which Wagner worked on in two distinct Text written Tristan und Isolde First performance
phases during his lifetime, beginning
and ending with Götterdämmerung. Music composed Die Meistersinger

Das Rheingold
Munich
Die Walküre
Bayreuth

Siegfried

Götterdämmerung

1845 1850 1855 1860 1865 1870 1875 1880 1885

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