Richard Wagner: Encyclopedia II - Richard Wagner - Wagner's influence and legacy

Richard Wagner - Wagner's influence and legacy

Wagner's contributions to art and culture are undeniable and monumental. In his lifetime, and for some years after, Wagner inspired fanatical devotion amongst his legions of fans, often considered by them to have a near god-like status. His music, Tristan und Isolde especially, broke important new ground. For years afterward, many composers felt compelled to align themselves with or against Wagner. Anton Bruckner and Hugo Wolf are indebted to him especially, as are Cesar Franck, Henri Duparc, Ernest Chausson, Jules Massenet, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Hans Pfitzner and dozens of others. Modern musicians influenced by Wagner's bombastic style include Rammstein and Joachim Witt among many others. Gustav Mahler said, "There was only Beethoven and Wagner". The twentieth century harmonic revolutions of Claude Debussy and Arnold Schoenberg can be traced to Tristan. It was Wagner who first demanded that the lights be dimmed during a dramatic performance of any kind, and it was his theater at Bayreuth which first made use of the orchestra pit, which at Bayreuth is entirely concealed from the audience. Wagner dreamt of an "invisible theatre" in which his works could be experienced in the imagination of the listener - with the hi-fi, his dream has become reality. A testament to the emotional power of his techniques, Wagner's style of musical theory has shaped even completely new art forms, including modern film scores and video game soundtracks. Notable works in those categories that are influential in continuing Wagner's leitmotif tradition are the internationally popular 1970s American film series Star Wars and the Japanese video game series Final Fantasy, the most widely distributed video game series ever. The movie "The Ring of the Nibelungs" drew both from historical sources and Wagner's work as well, and set a ratings record when aired as a two-part mini-series on German television. It was subsequently released in other countries under a variety of names, including "Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King" in the USA.

Wagner's influence on literature and philosophy is also significant. Friedrich Nietzsche, author of the influential The Birth of Tragedy, initially worshipped Wagner, seeing in his music the possible rejuvenation of the European spirit. Nietzsche later broke with Wagner after Parsifal, believing that work represented a pandering to Christian pieties. In the twentieth century, W. H. Auden once called Wagner "perhaps the greatest genius that ever lived", while James Joyce, Thomas Mann and Marcel Proust were heavily influenced by him and discussed Wagner in their novels. Wagner is one of the main subjects of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, which quotes from his operas. Stephane Mallarme, Paul Verlaine, and Charles Baudelaire adored him. Many of the ideas his music brought up, such as the association between love and death (or Eros and Thanatos) in Tristan, predated their investigation by Sigmund Freud.

Not all reaction to Wagner was positive. For a time, German musical life divided into two factions: Wagner's supporters and those of Johannes Brahms; the latter, with the support of the powerful critic Eduard Hanslick, championed traditional forms and led the conservative front against Wagnerian innovations, though the schism seems like sibling rivalry from today's perspective. Even those who, like Debussy, opposed him ("that old poisoner"), could not deny Wagner's influence. Indeed, Debussy was one of many composers who felt the need to break with Wagner precisely because his influence was unmistakable and overwhelming. Wagner's music continues to provoke strong reactions. In his later works, he created such long spans and deep pulses that to appreciate the music fully requires listeners to yield to Wagner's concept of time. Many resist - including Rossini ("Wagner has wonderful moments, and dreadful quarters of an hour"), whose own "Guillaume Tell" was, at over four hours, longer than any single Wagner evening. Wagner's ideals, from the "blonde beast" heroism of Siegfried to his enthusiastic reading of Schopenhauer and his fascination with death and apotheosis, are deeply unfashionable. Still, his operas continue to command a strong following, and Wagner is second only to Napoleon as a historical figure in the quantity of secondary literature he has stimulated. That he continues to excite controversy and admiration to such an extent, though, is due at root to his music, which is of unsurpassed nobility, power, grandeur - and a sometimes dangerously transcendent beauty.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Wagner's influence and legacy", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki