Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner was one of the most revolutionary figures in the history of music, a composer who made pivotal contributions to the development of harmony and musical drama that reverberate even today. Indeed, though Wagner occasionally produced successful music written on a relatively modest scale, opera -- the bigger, the better -- was clearly his milieu, and his aesthetic is perhaps the most grandiose that Western music has ever known.
Early in his career, Wagner learned both the elements and the practical, political realities of his craft by writing a handful of operas which were unenthusiastically, even angrily, received. Beginning with Rienzi (1838-40) and The Flying Dutchman (1841), however, he enjoyed a string of successes that propelled him to immortality and changed the face of music. His monumental Ring cycle of four operas -- Das Rheingold (1853-54), Die Walküre (1854-56), Siegfried (1856-71) and Götterdämmerung (1869-74) -- remains the most ambitious and influential contribution by any composer to the opera literature. Tristan and Isolde (1857-59) is perhaps the most representative example of Wagner's musical style, which is characterized by a high degree of chromaticism, a restless, searching tonal instability, lush harmonies, and the association of specific musical elements (known as leitmotifs, the flexible manipulation of which is one of the hallmarks of Wagner's music) with certain characters and plot points. Wagner wrote text as well as music for all his operas, which he preferred to call "music dramas."
Wagner's life matched his music for sheer drama. Born in Leipzig on May 22, 1813, he began in the early 1830s to write prolifically on music and the arts in general; over his whole career, his music would to some degree serve to demonstrate his aesthetic theories. He often worked as a conductor in his early years; a conducting engagement took him to Riga, Latvia, in 1837, but he fled the country in the middle of the night two years later to elude creditors. Wagner as a young man had some sympathy with the revolutionary movements of the middle 19th century (and even the Ring cycle contains a distinct anti-materialist and vaguely socialist drift); in the Dresden uprisings of 1849 he apparently took up arms, and he had to leave Germany when the police restored order. Settling in Zurich, Switzerland, he wrote little for some years, but evolved the intellectual framework for his towering, mature masterpieces. Wagner returned to Germany in 1864 under the protection and patronage of King Ludwig II of Bavaria; it was in Bayreuth, near Munich, that he undertook the construction of an opera house (completed in 1876) built to his personal specifications and suited to the massive fusion of music, staging, text, and scene design that his later operas entailed. Bayreuth became something of a shrine for the fanatical Wagnerites who carried the torch after his death; it remains the goal of many a pilgrimage today. His attitude toward Jews was deeply ambivalent (he believed, mistakenly, that his stepfather was Jewish), but some of his writings contain anti-Semitic elements that have aroused considerable controversy among opera lovers, especially in view of Adolf Hitler's apparent predilection for the composer's music.
© Rovi Staff /TiVo
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My morning with Wagner
Classical - Released by UME - Global Clearing House on 5 Sep 2020
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Entry Of The Gods Into Valhalla (From The Opera Das Rheingold) Arr. For Piano By Louis Brassin
Richard Wagner, Elise Williams
Classical - Released by Pastel Records Canada on 15 Jun 2023
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Masters Of Classical Music
Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra, Budapest Symphony Orchestra, Vassil Kazandjiev & Gyorgy Lehel
Classical - Released by Cobra Entertainment LLC. on 1 Dec 2009
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Wagner: Magic Fire Music
Classical - Released by Cobra Entertainment LLC. on 1 Dec 2009
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Soundtrack for a Storm
Classical - Released by Paradise Classical on 13 Jul 2017
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Albumblatt, WWV 94 (Arr. for Violin and Piano by August Wilhelmj)
Classical - Released by Azul Music on 24 Feb 2023
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Wagner: Lohengrin: Act I: Prelude (Digitally Remastered)
Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, Libor Pešek
Opera - Released by EMG Classical on 16 Oct 2015
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Die Walküre: Ride of the Valkyries (Alex Sauvage Remix)
House - Released by 9Ninerecords on 2 Jul 2021
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The Classical Collection - Wagner - Obras maestras de la ópera
Classical - Released by ClassicalPirosDigital on 12 Jun 2015
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Autumnal Wagner
Classical - Released by UME - Global Clearing House on 10 Oct 2020
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Road trip music
Classical - Released by Paradise Classical on 14 Jun 2017
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Wagner: Magic Fire Music & Wotan's Farewell - Chopin: Mazurkas, Op. 17; Preludes, Op. 28; Waltzes, Op. 64 - Canning: Fantasy On A Hymn Tune by Justin Morgan
Classical - Released by Everest Records on 29 Jul 2016
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Sigfried Idyll
Richard Wagner, Orchestra da camera Kandinskij, Aldo Lombardo conductor
Classical - Released by Kandinskij Gold on 22 Oct 2021
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Great Voices Of The Opera Vol. 11
Classical - Released by Documents on 1 Sep 2008
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Der fliegende Hollander (The Flying Dutchman)
Opera - Released by Opera d'Oro on 14 Mar 2006
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A Classical Compendium: Wagner
Classical - Released by UME - Global Clearing House on 17 Sep 2022
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Wagner: Overtures
State Symphony Orchestra of the USSR
Classical - Released by Pipeline Music on 28 Nov 2006
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Classics In The Pop Of Treatments. Wagner - The Best
Classical - Released by Russian Compact Disc on 7 Jun 1998
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Classical Pieces
State Symphony Orchestra of the USSR
Classical - Released by Pipeline Music on 8 Jun 2006
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Summer Classical Music
Classical - Released by Paradise Classical on 20 Jun 2017
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