Mark Duley
Instructor Jones
Music 150
12 November 2015
Wagner, the Art of Life May 22, 1813, Leipzig, Modern-Day Germany; a boy is born to a baker’s daughter and clerk. Unbeknownst to them, this boy would go on to challenge the very idea of musical, its relation to life, and its role as an art. Wagner will come into his age and our modern age defined as many things; racist, genius, poet, philosopher, politician, and musician. So what is Wagner, why should we care and how can someone who died before the turn of the 20th century have any impact on our lives? It really is quite the behemoth to tackle, trying to explain a man so indecipherably complicated as Wagner in a few pages is a daunting task for the best of us. But perhaps, just maybe,
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Wagner entered into a traditional pastoral school at the age of 7, there he would receive his first attention in the education of music. Wagner would receive proper instruction, only to realize that his learning capabilities were more attuned to learning by ear. At the age of 8 Geyer would die and a member of Geyer’s family would send Wagner to a school of classical education. Here Wagner would gain his first real taste of classical pieces of art, music, and literature, drawing inspiration from the likes of Goethe and Shakespeare. Until his time in university Wagner would go on to experience and absorb the works of Beethoven and Mozart, with great admiration. In adulthood, following his university education, Wagner would start to form bonds, connections, and ideals that would shape his life and music. Wagner would travel from Germany, after financial loss, to Russia, with his actress wife, he would then flee back to Dresden, ultimately to be exiled because of his, then, extreme left political involvement. Wagner’s years in exile would result in some of the most despairing moments of his life but would also prove to be some of his most explosive years of creation. During this dark stretch of time Wagner would work on some of his most important creations. Drawing from the likes of Schopenhauer Tristan und Isolde would be started, Der Ring des Nibelungen would be finished, and the famous Die Walküre would be completed. Wagner’s darkest moments would give the Western
Romantic music inspired two smaller movements: nationalistic music and music about legends. Richard Wagner (1813-1883) is a German composer who wrote many pieces on the basis of a story or myth. He revolutionized opera through creativity, discontent with musical formulas and his focus on drama.
Only a few composers in the history of time have ever successfully left their mark throughout our musical world we live in today. It’s been over two hundred years since the birth of Beethoven and his music still speaks to us today as he originally expressed and composed it. Ludwig Van Beethoven was born in the city of Bonn Germany on December 16th 1770 and has since been one of the most influential composers known to man. A common theme of early age learning and mastering seems to emerge in Beethoven’s life because while living in a musical family as a child, his father taught him how to play the piano, violin and in addition how to compose musical pieces since he was four years of age. A few short years later, he gave his first public piano performance at the age of seven. While Beethoven certainly gained a lot of knowledge from his peers, he also supported his family by giving music lessons and also by playing in the court orchestra. In the year 1792, Beethoven worked under an Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn and by the year 1800, his compositions established him as a strong Mozart successor.
Schumann's wife, the composer and pianist Clara, wrote in her diary about his first visit, that Brahms was “one of those who comes as if straight from God. – He played us sonatas, scherzos etc. of his own, all of them showing exuberant imagination, depth of feeling, and mastery of form ... what he played to us is so masterly that one cannot but think that the good God sent him into the world ready-made. He has a great future before him, for he will first find the true field for his genius when he begins to write for the orchestra.”.
In Alban Berg’s Traumgekrönt and Liebesode, one may observe these Wagnerian innovations at work: both the atonal approach developed further by Debussy and the Impressionists in the wake of Wagner and grand-scale composition by Mahler and Bruckner. Berg’s songs—like Mahler’s—simultaneously contain characteristics of music’s Romantic past and its post-Wagnerian future.
In this essay, I will be discussing the music of Jewish composers who were unable to showcase their pieces, due to the massive animosity towards their race, despite having composed several outstanding pieces of music. Although they were persecuted severely during the Nazi era, they too contributed to the international music community. For many of the Jewish composers, the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany and Austria was an increasing danger to their safety in the country. They had to make difficult choices to survive –To stay in Germany and remain oppressed in their very own country, or to leave, and be detached from their own cultural roots forever.
Within the year of 1833 Wagner composed his first completed opera named “die feen” (the fairies) which notably impersonated the style of Carl Maria Von Weber (Richard Wagner Biography) . Wagner then worked as a musical director at the opera house in Magdeburg for a short period during which he wrote “das liebesverbot” (the ban on love), based on “measure for measure” by William Shakespeare.
Following his stints in the higher learning institutions of Massachusetts, he made the pilgrimage to Paris, France in the year he he had received his master’s to study under noted composer Nadia Boulanger. This apprenticeship was key; Nadia Boulanger taught a great many of the most important and influential composers in the twentieth century. He
One of few great composers to be recognized in their lifetime, Johannes Brahms stood out among the crowd of composers in the Romantic period of music. During this period, musicians discarded the intelligence and form of the Classical period in favor of emotion and feeling. Experiencing one's inner-child became a prominent inspiration as well as forces of nature, including thunderstorms and crop-circles. Brahms developed talent early on and, with the help of his father, flourished into a powerful composer blending the sounds of the Classical and Romantic periods.
INTRODUCTION Attention getter: Whether in spite of, or because of his father’s excessive harsh and abusive methods of teaching, Beethoven was an extraordinary musician from an early age. He showed creative musicianship and imagination that reach further than any other composer ever has or possibly ever will.
Wagner felt that Mendelssohn’s music was incapable of grasping the listeners’ deepest feelings and emotions; only being able to allow the listeners to superficially enjoy the music as a fleeting fancy instead of a deeply emotional experience that true European musicians were able to extract through their works (Wagner, 11-12). Wagner writes his views in a way that almost seems to, at first, compliment Mendelssohn’s attempt to extract true emotion from his listeners but his condescending praise morphs into a
Johann Sebastian Bach is known as one of the greatest German composers of all time. He contributed a lot to the Enlightenment era (1685-1815). His music was used much for religious worship. His work is iconic because he was the “supreme master of counterpoint, allowing him to write music as the musical equivalent of textual ideas” (Bach, Johann Sebastian). He was orphaned at the age of ten and taken in by his brother, Johann Christoph. He took after his brother, and by 15, he was singing in the choir at St. Michaels Church. By 18, he was a violinist in the chamber orchestra of Duke Johann Ernst. He then left that church to be the church organist at Arnstadt instead. There, the church let Bach leave to study with Dietrich Buxtehude, a composer
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist and one the most significant composers of the 19th century. Brahms showed great talent as a youth starting piano lessons at age 7 and giving his first performance by age 10 (Tyle). In 1853, Brahms was introduced to Robert Schumann, and an immediate friendship ensued. Schumann thoroughly impressed with Brahms, wrote about him praising his work. The article brought notoriety to Brahms and was a turning point in his career (“Johannes Brahms”).
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist- he was born in Hamburg , however, he spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria. Brahms is frequently considered both a traditionalist and an innovator. His music is embedded in the arrangements and compositional practices of the Baroque and Classical leaders. Brahms intended to honor the “purity” of the “German” structures and develop them into a Romantic idiom, in the process of creating fresh daring methodologies to harmony and melody (Swa. Johna. 5-10). The thorough, highly constructed nature of Brahms work was an introduction and a muse for a generation of composers.
In 1832 he published his first composition which was a piano sonata and symphony that were influenced heavily by Beethoven (Bonds 464). However; in attempting to write these kinds of music he realized he loved theatre music (Bonds 463). Wagner spent a lot of time with the theatre he was able to see Geyer preform and see all the inner workings of the theatre (Jacobs 3). Through his experiences with the theatre he began to develop his own ideas of music. He only valued music for the operatic images that struck him (Jacobs 6). His image of music from the beginning seemed to be very narrow
As a leading composer of the romantic and early part of the modern era, German Richard Strauss is known for his highly dramatic and intense operas. Strauss’ work seems to be, along with Gustav Mahler, the ultimate representation and evolution of German Romanticism developed by Richard Wagner. Known for some unbelievable staggering orchestral music and lieder, Strauss’ operas included Der Rosenkavalier, Elektra, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Ariadne