Spending Time with Wagner

Having spent 15 hours with Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle I feel compelled to write about it.  The challenge mind you is not finding subject matter but attempting to be succinct and focused—not qualities to which Wagner aspired.  First off the comparisons between Wagner and JRR Tolkien.  Reading the synopsis of the Wagner’s Ring one can clearly see how it influenced Tolkien who also spent a good portion of his life working on an equally monumental work.  Both contain a ring of power, creatures obsessed with it, a cast of thousands, wars, great journeys, dragons, monumental battles and death. 

 

Whatever your opinion of his operas even a brief look at his biography makes it clear that Wilhelm Richard Wagner was not a very nice person.  Holding views that half a century later endeared him to the Nazi Party; he was also self-indulgent—running off with his best friend’s wife; and a control freak.  Despite these flaws in his moral fibre the genius of his operas attracted deep-pocketed, influencial patrons who were willing to aid him in his meglomaniac schemes. 

 

When I say that Wagner was a control freak see the following as evidence that this is an understatement.  The creation of Der Ring des Nibelungen took him over twenty-five years.  Not only did he compose the score for over 15 hours of opera but also wrote his own libretto.  To meet the sonic demands of his score he created three new brass instruments for the orchestra that played his music.  Recognizing the strain placed upon singers forced to project their voices over his massive orchestra for up to five hours he decided that nothing would suit but that he build a Festspielhaus specially designed to meet the demands of his plays.  Thus at Bayreuth was built a house whose design was adapted by Wagner himself and built under his direct supervision.  Both to direct the sound of his orchestra toward his singers first before it reached the audience and to ensure that this audience found nothing to distract them from the action on stage he place a hood over the orchestra pit that guaranteed the audience not see them.  To this day the town of Bayreuth and its Festspielhaus play host to performances of Wagner’s Ring Cycle most summers. 

 

There are some who find it impossible to ignore Wagner’s human failings when they approach his music but I can’t resist being drawn into those soaring melodies, whatever I might think of the man who composed them.  I don’t have to condone his lifestyle to enjoy his music.  Some final comparisons.  When Peter Jackson spent three quarters of a billion dollars creating his movie interpretation of Tolkien’s Ring—the prequel, the Hobbit is yet to come—he hired Howard Shore to create the musical score.  That Shore has studied Wagner is obvious.  His use of melodies associated with every major character—leit motifs; styles of music and singing for each region or group of creatures; unique orchestration and instrumentation for each ‘national’ grouping; and unique instruments to represent certain charcters or groups—all are operetic devices.  Finally it is no co-incidence that movie director, Francis Ford Coppola uses the Ride of the Walküres in Apocalypse Now.  The similarities between Wagner and Coppola seem obvious.