By ROBERT BAGAR NEW YORK Grosset & Dunlap PUBLISHERS Copyright 1943, 1950 The Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York Printed in the United States of America...

This volume, concerned with Wagnerian excerpts most frequently performed in the concert hall, has been prepared primarily for the audience of the Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York. Its object is to supply information in as concise and complete a manner as space will permit. It makes no boast about originality, particularly since the bulk of the material involved stems from any number of treatises on the subject of Wagner and his music. No artist has known a fiercer urge to create than Ri

Bulwer’s Rienzi revived an old desire of Wagner’s to make an opera out of the story of the last of the Tribunes. He was in Dresden during the summer of 1837 and there he read Barmann’s translation of the Bulwer novel. However, he did not begin actual work until the following July. First, of course, came the text. Later that month he started on the music. By May 1839, he had completed two acts. The remainder of the score, with the exception of the Overture, was written and orchestrated in Paris.

This compact and brilliantly written Overture calls for the following instrumentation: piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, four horns, two bassoons, two trumpets, three trombones, bass tuba, kettledrums, harp, and strings. John Runciman once remarked about this music, “It is the atmosphere of the sea that counts; the roar of the billows, the ‘hui!’ of the wind, the dashing and plunging.... The sea, indeed, is the background, foreground, the whole environment of the drama

The first concert performance of this well-known Overture took place at Leipzig, on February 12, 1846, under the direction of Mendelssohn. The event was a benefit for the Gewandhaus Orchestra Pension Fund. Wagner himself furnished a “program” for the Overture when the musicians performing it at a Zurich concert requested an explanation of the music. The “program” in a translation by William Ashton Ellis follows: “To begin with, the orchestra leads before us the Pilgrim’s Chorus alone; it draws n

The opera was first produced at the Royal Opera House, Dresden, on October 19, 1845. Some sixteen years later, due to the interest and influence of Princess Metternich, wife of the Austrian Ambassador to France, the work was introduced to Paris. For that production Wagner extended his first scene to include a Bacchanale, the reasons for this being as amusing to us as they must have been tragic to Wagner. The Princess revealed, in an article written for the Pall Mall Magazine (London, 1894) some

In the summer of 1845, while Wagner was at Marienbad, he worked out the plan for Lohengrin . The libretto he wrote during the following winter. Then came a topsy-turvy scheme of creation. In composing the music he began with the hero’s Narrative in the last act, “because the monologue contained the most significant musical germs in the whole score.” He finished the third act on March 25, 1847, the first act on June 8 of that year, the second act on August 2, and the Prelude on August 28. The orc

A colossal work in four parts, the Ring’s central theme is one of redemption. The Norse God Wotan, addicted to the amassing of power, may not achieve it through deceit or treachery. By trickery he obtains from the Nibelung Alberich a ring possessing untold powers, made of the gold of the Rhine. Alberich hisses a curse, in losing it, which only a pure hero acting as a free agent may remove. Wotan’s attempts to get the ring, his often devious reasoning, and the panoplied purpose of the whole, make

In the time intervening between Das Rheingold and Die Walküre Wotan has worked out a plan to save the gods from destruction. The ring must not fall into the wrong hands, those of Alberich, for instance, for the wily and greedy creature knows full well its powers. The thing to do, then, is to regain possession of it without “craft or violence.” He must employ some means above such devices. Consequently his plan is to bring into being a hero who shall not be his servitor, but rather the agency for

In a letter dated June 25, 1870, Wagner wrote of his wife Cosima, “She has defied every disapprobation and taken upon herself every condemnation. She has borne to me a wonderfully beautiful boy, whom I call boldly Siegfried; he is now growing, together with my work [he was working then on the opera Siegfried ; hence the name]; he gives me a new long life, which at last has attained a meaning. Thus we get along without the world, from which we have wholly withdrawn.” The composer wrote the music

The music for this sequence is taken from the scene before the dragon’s cave in the second act of Siegfried . In arranging it for concert use, Wagner gave it the name Waldweben ( Forest Weavings or Forest Murmurs ). The young hero Siegfried is left to his own thoughts by the dwarf Mime. The rustling of the leaves is first heard in D minor, then in B major. Siegfried is daydreaming. He ponders on the question of his origin. He knows that he is not of Mime’s blood, and the clarinet, paralleling, a

This music comes between the Prologue and the first act. It is frequently referred to as a “scherzo.” Siegfried has taken leave of his wife Brünnhilde and, exhorted by her, sallies forth on new adventures. The music brings up the hero’s past achievements, whose themes are presented in new guises. They are cleverly interwoven, the pattern being rich in colors and effects as well as in sonorities. Through the orchestral web may be detected threads akin to such thematic ideas as Siegfried’s horn ca

Through the trickery of Hagen, villainous half-brother of Gunther, Siegfried is slain. His body is lifted tenderly by Gunther’s followers and carried back to the hall of the Gibichungs. As that happens on the stage, the orchestra sings out with a giant dirge, lamenting the fall of the Volsungs while reviewing previous moments in the history of the tragic race. There is the reference to the love of Siegmund and Sieglinde from Die Walküre . Toward its conclusion the horns and bass trumpet announce

The end of the gigantic Ring , specifically Brünnhilde’s scene of immolation, is frequently performed in concert with a soprano soloist. The heroine’s great monologue, delivered in the hall of the Gibichungs, writes finis to a drama that takes four separate operas to tell. In her grief over the death of her hero-husband she stills the “loud, unworthy” lamentations of the others who are gathered about the slain Siegfried. She commands them to erect a funeral pyre and to place the hero’s body upon

In 1854, when Wagner was in the midst of composing the Ring , the idea for an opera on the Tristan theme came to him. Not till three years later, however, did he begin actual work on it, and the music-drama was finished in August 1859. Complications of various kinds interfered with the production of the opera, but it finally obtained its première at the Royal Court Theater in Munich, on June 10, 1865, under the direction of Hans von Bülow. Wagner’s version of the tale combines features from nume

“The completion of Die Meistersinger , Triebschen, Thursday, October 24, 1867, 8 o’clock in the evening, R. W.” These words were inscribed on the last sheet of the manuscript of Wagner’s only operatic comedy. This was some twenty-two years after the very first drafts were drawn at Marienbad. The doctor had ordered a complete rest. But rest to Wagner meant ennui. Perhaps, he thought, he might be able to rest while composing a lighter work. The idea took hold. He gave it considerable thought. He c

Often heard in the concert hall are several other excerpts from Die Meistersinger . These include the Procession of the Guilds, the Dance of the Apprentices, the Procession of the Masters, the Homage to Sachs, and the Finale....

Most of the Ring , all of Tristan , and a considerable portion of Die Meistersinger had been written by Wagner before he started actual work on the “consecrational festival stage play,” Parsifal , in 1865. He made a first outline of the libretto in August of that year, some two decades after he had become acquainted with the Parsifal poem of Wolfram von Eschenbach, the Minnesinger. Not till 1877, however, did the text attain its final shape, and it was published in December. Sometime previously

The Good Friday Spell is placed at the end of the first scene in Act III of the opera. Gurnemanz is now an old hermit who lives in a humble abode at the edge of a forest. He comes out of the hut when he hears a groaning sound in the distance. Presently Parsifal arrives. He is a knight clad in black armor, carrying the sacred spear and a buckler. He is weary. The old Gurnemanz plies him with questions, but Parsifal will not answer until he is apprised of the fact that it is Good Friday. Whereupon