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Author: Daniel H. Foster Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 9780521517393 Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 398
Book Description
Through his reading of primary and secondary classical sources, as well as his theoretical writings, Richard Wagner developed a Hegelian-inspired theory linking the evolution of classical Greek politics and poetry. This book demonstrates how, by turning theory into practice, Wagner used this evolutionary paradigm to shape the music and the libretto of the Ring cycle. Foster describes how each of the Ring's operas represents a particular phase of Greek poetic and political development: Das Rheingold and Die Walküre create epic national identity in its earlier and later stages respectively; Siegfried expresses lyric personal identity; and Götterdämmerung destructively culminates with a tragi-comedy about civic identity. This study sees the Greeks through the lens of those scholars whose work influenced Wagner most, focusing on epic, lyric, and comedy, as well as Greek tragedy. Most significantly, the book interrogates the ways in which Wagner uses Greek aesthetics to further his own ideological goals.
Author: Daniel H. Foster Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 9780521517393 Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 398
Book Description
Through his reading of primary and secondary classical sources, as well as his theoretical writings, Richard Wagner developed a Hegelian-inspired theory linking the evolution of classical Greek politics and poetry. This book demonstrates how, by turning theory into practice, Wagner used this evolutionary paradigm to shape the music and the libretto of the Ring cycle. Foster describes how each of the Ring's operas represents a particular phase of Greek poetic and political development: Das Rheingold and Die Walküre create epic national identity in its earlier and later stages respectively; Siegfried expresses lyric personal identity; and Götterdämmerung destructively culminates with a tragi-comedy about civic identity. This study sees the Greeks through the lens of those scholars whose work influenced Wagner most, focusing on epic, lyric, and comedy, as well as Greek tragedy. Most significantly, the book interrogates the ways in which Wagner uses Greek aesthetics to further his own ideological goals.
Author: Daniel H. Foster Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1139486314 Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 399
Book Description
Through his reading of primary and secondary classical sources, as well as his theoretical writings, Richard Wagner developed a Hegelian-inspired theory linking the evolution of classical Greek politics and poetry. This book demonstrates how, by turning theory into practice, Wagner used this evolutionary paradigm to shape the music and the libretto of the Ring cycle. Foster describes how each of the Ring's operas represents a particular phase of Greek poetic and political development: Das Rheingold and Die Walküre create epic national identity in its earlier and later stages respectively; Siegfried expresses lyric personal identity; and Götterdämmerung destructively culminates with a tragi-comedy about civic identity. This study sees the Greeks through the lens of those scholars whose work influenced Wagner most, focusing on epic, lyric, and comedy, as well as Greek tragedy. Most significantly, the book interrogates the ways in which Wagner uses Greek aesthetics to further his own ideological goals.
Author: M. Owen Lee Publisher: University of Toronto Press ISBN: 9780802085801 Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 124
Book Description
Richard Wagner's knowledge of and passion for Greek drama was so profound that for Friedrich Nietzsche, Wagner was Aeschylus come alive again. Surprisingly little has been written about the pervasive influence of classical Greece on the quintessentially German master. In this elegant and masterfully argued book, renowned opera critic Father Owen Lee describes for the contemporary reader what it might have been like to witness a dramatic performance of Aeschylus in the theatre of Dionysus in Athens in the fifth century B.C. something that Wagner himself undertook to do on several occasions, imagining a performance of The Oresteia in his mind, reading it aloud to his friends, providing his own commentary, and relating the Greek classic drama to his own romantic view. Father Lee also uses Wagner's writings on Greece and entries from his wife's diaries to cast new light on Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger, Parsifal, and especially the mighty Ring cycle, where Wagner made extensive use of Greek elements to give structural unity and dramatic credibility to his Nordic and Germanic myths. No opera fan, argues Father Lee, can really understand Wagner saving Brünhilde without knowing the Athena who, in Greek drama, first brought justice to Athens. Written with a clarity and depth of knowledge that have characterized all Father Lee's books on the classics of Greece and Rome and made his six other volumes of opera bestsellers, Athena Sings traces the profound influence an influence few music lovers are aware of that Greek theatre and culture had on the most German of composers and his revolutionary musical dramas.
Author: Jeffrey L. Buller Publisher: ISBN: Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 224
Book Description
What did Richard Wagner know about ancient Greece? More importantly, what did he think he knew? How did Wagner's attitudes towards the past shape his construction of the Ring cycle? Classically Romantic attempts to answer these questions through an examination of Wagner's intellectual background and the structure of the Ring itself. The book explores the differences between Wagner's "romantic classicism" and traditional "philological classicism." Anticipating the "Great Books" movement of the twentieth century, Wagner's views were an interesting blend of classical formalism and romantic idealism. Wagner believed, for instance, that classical literature was important, not because it shed light on the past, but because it had "continued relevance" to each succeeding generation. The classics purified and redeemed ancient society, Wagner concluded, and only an equivalent type of work could purify and redeem the modern world. It was out of a desire to create a "modern classic" that Wagner's four-drama cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen, arose. In Wagner's romantic view of the past, Greek tragedy was the only perfectly unified form of art. The composer believed that, in ancient tragedy, all the arts worked together harmoniously so as to guide the audience towards a single, significant purpose: a harmonious social order. In this way, although Wagner saw himself as imitating classical models, his ultimate goal was identical to that of many Romantic Age social reformers. Fundamental aspects of Wagnerian drama may thus ultimately be traced to the composer's unusual combination of the classical and the romantic. For example, Wagner's central concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, the "total work of art" in which every artistic element blended perfectly with every other artistic element, has a direct connection to the composer's desire to recreate classical tragedy, the one form of art in which he believed those elements had been unified. By examining each of Aristotle's six constituent elements of tragedy (plot, music, speech, thought, character, and spectacle), Classically Romantic demonstrates what Wagner envisioned when he sought a perfect "union" of all the components of art. Perhaps most important of the book's contributions is its demonstration that the leitmotif, usually regarded solely as a musical phenomenon, was actually a thematic principle of construction employed on many levels of the drama. Wagner introduced were repeated themes of plot, characterization, speech, and imagery, all endowed with meaning in a manner precisely parallel to that of the musical leitmotivs. Moreover, since Wagner dictated nearly every aspect of how the original productions of his work were staged, even visual elements of the drama could be given a consistent, "thematic" role. Colors, images of light and darkness, and mist all serve as "visual leitmotivs" in much the same way that one can also speak of musical leitmotivs, leitmotivs of plot, character leitmotivs, and so on. Finally, Wagner's desire to bring all social classes together in a festival similar to the Great Dionysia of ancient Athens helps explain why the composer created the Wagner Societies throughout Germany in his own lifetime and why the Festspielhaus of Bayreuth was established as it was, with annual festivals rather than continual performances...
Author: Richard H. Bell Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand ISBN: 0227177479 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 342
Book Description
Wagner’s Ring is one of the greatest of all artworks of Western civilization, but what is it all about? The power and mystery of Wagner’s creation was such that even he felt he stood before his work ‘as though before some puzzle’. A clue to the Ring’s greatness lies in its multiple avenues of self-disclosure and the corresponding plethora of interpretations that over the years has granted ample scope for directors, and will no doubt do so well into the distant future. One possible interpretation, which Richard Bell argues should be taken seriously, is the Ring as Christian theology. In this first of two volumes, Bell considers, among other things, how the composer’s Christian interests may be detected in the ‘forging’ of his Ring, in his appropriation of sources (whether they be myths and sagas, writers, poets, or philosophers), and in works composed around the same time, especially his Jesus of Nazareth.
Author: Richard H. Bell Publisher: ISBN: 1498235743 Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 363
Book Description
(Vol 1.) Wagner's Ring is one of the greatest of all artworks of Western civilization, but what is it all about? The power and mystery of Wagner's creation was such that he himself felt he stood before his work "as though before some puzzle." A clue to the Ring's greatness lies in its multiple avenues of self-disclosure and the corresponding plethora of interpretations that over the years has granted ample scope for directors and will no doubt do so well into the distant future. One possible interpretation, which Richard Bell argues should be taken seriously, is the Ring as Christian theology. In this first of two volumes, Bell considers, among other things, how the composer's Christian interests may be detected in the "forging" of his Ring, looking at how he appropriated his sources (whether they be myths and sagas, writers, poets, or philosophers) and considering works composed around the same time, especially his Jesus of Nazareth. -- back cover.
Author: John Louis DiGaetani Publisher: ISBN: Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 470
Book Description
"Wagner's Ring cycle--The Ring of the Niebelung--has been described as one of the most enduring of operatic spectacles, and the best writing on the subject has here been brought together in a collection that includes articles by George Bernard Shaw, Georg Solti and Andrew Porter; excerpts from Wagner's own letters and works; and discourses by over thirty other writers. Here is a complete coverage of the tetralogy of the Ring--Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung--in essays on Wagner's intention, the theory behind it, its interpretation, artistic backgrounds, historical influences, literary sources, musical architecture, modern stagings, the Ring in English, and various styles of performance. We are living in the midst of a worldwide Wagner renaissance, and this anthology will enrich and enlighten both performers and fans of Wagner's timeless operas, while serving as a superb introduction to those new to the Ring." --Back cover.
Author: M. Owen Lee Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation ISBN: 9780879101862 Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 132
Book Description
(Limelight). Commentary on and a concise, lucid interpretation of the opera world's most complex masterwork, expanded from the author's popular intermission talks during Met Opera broadcasts. "Anyone, whether knowledgeable or not, will profit by reading it..." Opera Quarterly
Author: Daniel H. Foster
Author: Daniel H. Foster
Author: Daniel H. Foster
Author: Daniel Harmon Foster
Author: M. Owen Lee
Author: Jeffrey L. Buller
Author: Richard H. Bell
Author: Richard H. Bell
Author: John Louis DiGaetani
Author: M. Owen Lee
Author: John Culshaw