HUMN 2002 ROMANTICISM: SELF AND REVOLUTION
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German Romantic Opera
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Plots based on German legend |
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Scenes of country life and nature in it's wild state |
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A cast of characters that includes supernatural beings, nobility, and common folk-the naive and pure, the evil, and the supernaturally possessed; |
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Elements of magic and the supernatural treated as powerful forces capable of threatening, influencing, directing, or dominating the lives of humans |
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The ultimate triumph of good over evil, as salvation or redemption, or even "rescue" |
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Use of simple, folk-like, Germanic melodies, with harmonies and orchestral timbres appropriate to the dramatic situation. |
Richard Wagner (1813-1883)
- Born in Leipzig, Germany as the ninth child of Johanna ands Karl Wagner. As a boy he received a general music education, some music lessons, and acquired bit parts in operas and plays. Wagner wrote essays on art, music, drama, aesthetics: Art and Revolution (1849). Artwork of the Future (1849), and Opera and Drama (1851). In 1871, Wagner acquired land in the town of Bayreuth to build a theater of his design (1872-76). The first Bayreuth Festival was held in the theater in 1876.
Wagner wrote about his own concept of "total art work" called Gesamptkunstwerk, whereby all the arts merge to achieve one common artistic goal. Wagner was influenced the literary movement called "Realism", which succeeded Romanticism. Realism dealt with both tragic and mundane situations in an objective, non-judgmental manner. For example, Wagner's opera, Parsifal was based on Grimm's fairytale of the Swan Knight, with historical elements added to justify the stories tragic ending. Elements of black and white magic are present in his opera, Parsifal. Likewise, in the opera, Lohengrin, Lohengrin symbolically represented divine love descending in human form to give it's blessing to humanity whose faith was too weak to accept it unquestioningly. The Prelude to Lohengrin is often interpreted as portraying the descent of the Holy Grail and its ascent back into Heaven..
Wagner compared harmony to a vast sea on which melody was found in the cresting waves. "Tone itself is the primeval fluid element,, and the immeasurable expanse of this fluid is the sea of harmony...a longing breeze arises, which agitates the placid surface in waves of melody, gracefully rising and falling." Harmony for Wagner was the source of pure emotion, color, and unbridled beauty in music. The realm of harmony is "desiring, longing, raging, languishing."
A scene from Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde is a music drama (opera) concerned with human character and emotions, and is devoid of spectacle. The libretto (written out text complete with dialogue and account of the story) is based on a Medieval Celtic poem that relates the tragic love story of Tristan and Isolde. Wagner uses Leitmotifs that are allegorical and associative, related to and derived from one another. Frequently, one leitmotif is the inversion of another (Yearning and suffering). Leitmotifs may be melodic, harmonic, or a combination of both. The feeling of yearning generated by the Prelude's first measures is not fully resolved until the opera's conclusion in the Liebestod ("Love death") which is sometimes refereed to as Isolde's transfiguration.
Isolde's transfiguration
The music for scenes is continuous, although scenes are distinguishable. In the Liebestod - the orchestration is very dense (very large orchestras) , but the text is embedded in the orchestral sound, allowing the voice to become another tonal color in the orchestral fabric.
Leitmotifs do not themselves unite the music drams or make Wagner's music great. Formal structure and keys are unifying factors. Frequently, sections of acts are organized in AAB or ABA forms. Often times, individual characters or important objects are assigned specific keys, and relationships between characters and characters or characters ands objects are reflected in the keys assigned to them.
Wagner's concept of Infinite Melody - use of continuous expressive melody- music from the beginning onward util the curtain in the last scene. Wagner used every traditional and historical musical technique that would serve his purposed, shaping them and merging them expressively in his music to make it radically new. His use of orchestral color, treatment of motives, and minimalization of divisions and subdivisions of the point where they were inaudible gave his music a strikingly symphonic effect, that affected many symphonic composers of his time.
In Wagner's music, there is often chordal ambiguity. The harmonic vocabulary of Wagner - daring chromatic progressions and bold accented appogiaturas useful in breaking down tonal harmony, eventually leading to the advent of pan-tonality, atonality and dodecaphony in the 20th century.