Opera and drama

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Opera and Drama is Richard Wagner's most extensive and most important art theoretical work , which he wrote from September 1850 to February 1851 in exile in Zurich and dedicated to his friend Theodor Uhlig . He later published this extensive work in volumes three and four of his collected writings. Richard Strauss called it "the book of all books about music".

Title page of the first print

Wagner's intention

In his writings Die Kunst und die Revolution as well as The Artwork of the Future Wagner had already complained about the collapse of art and tried to show the way to an ideal art form, to a total work of art encompassing all the arts . The amalgamation of drama and music to form musical drama should play a central role . Wagner divides his book into three parts:

  • The opera and the essence of music
  • The drama and essence of dramatic poetry
  • Poetry and music in the drama of the future

In the first few parts Wagner explains the difference between word and tone poetry and defines music as the most perfect form of human language, as the culmination of poetry. Science has revealed to us the “ organism of language; but what she showed us was a dead organism that only the greatest poetic distress can revive, namely by closing the wounds cut by the anatomical dissecting knife on the body of language and breathing its breath into it inspire him to move himself. But this breath is: - the music! “While Gluck and Mozart are presented as positive examples by opera composers, Wagner presents Weber's operas as the beginning decline of the genre and finally turns critically against Rossini and especially against Meyerbeer :“ The secret of Meyerbeer's opera music is - the effect ”and describes this term as " effect without cause ".

In the following, the poet-composer clarifies the special effect of alliteration and harmonic modulation with originally related tones, in order to be able to express the greatest emotional sensations. It describes the manual process to find certain tones and keys. In this respect, Wagner has indeed developed a new method as a "composer" to achieve the greatest possible effect on human emotions. He is the first composer who deals almost scientifically with the effects of music, similar to the Berlin physicist Hermann von Helmholtz , who at almost the same time dealt with the physiological function of music and the “doctrine of sound sensations as the physiological basis of music ”.

Clay painting and leitmotifs

Music or harmony (as the feminine) is the “child-bearing element” that takes in the poetic intention only as a procreative seed, writes Wagner - and he continues to philosophize about the optimal functioning of an orchestra to convey music and invent the concept of “ Tonmalerei ”. For the first time, a composer tries to “plan” the effect of music as if on the drawing board, to use music to “build up tension in a calm phase of the dramatic action” in order to awaken and increase expectations and desires in the listener. The music must appeal more to the feeling than to the mind of the recipient. He then comes to “melodic moments” which, as “emotional guides”, are important building blocks of the drama, so that we “remember the hunch” and let us “hunch the memory”. Wagner here clarifies his “ leitmotif technique ”, which he then used in the Ring of the Nibelung , which he began a little later, as an “infinite melody” so phenomenally on conveyor belts of the plot.

The composer Wagner argues in conclusion that an effective drama can only come from set to music poetry and poets and musicians have to coordinate so that a perfect musical expression is realized. "What is not worth singing is also not worth poetry," he claims logically. In an "Outlook", Wagner then draws a link to the revolutionary change in the art landscape:

“Where the statesman is in despair, the politician lets his hands sink, the socialist struggles with fruitless systems, even the philosopher can only interpret but cannot predict [...], then it is the artist who sees figures with a clear eye can show itself to the longing that longs for the only true thing - the human being . The artist is able to see an as yet undesigned world shaped in advance [...]. But his enjoyment is communication [...], so he also finds the hearts, yes the senses, to which he can communicate. [...] The creator of the work of art of the future is none other than the artist of the present, who suspects the life of the future and longs to be contained in it. Those who nourish this longing from their own abilities are already living in a better life - but only one can do this: - the artist. "

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Roland Tenschert: Richard Wagner in the judgment of Richard Strauss. From letters and oral statements of the master. In: Schweizerische Musikzeitung 94, 1954, p. 328.
  2. ↑ Hermann v. Helmholtz: The theory of tone sensations as a physiological basis for the theory of music , Braunschweig, 1863.
  3. ↑ Richard Wagner, Opera and Drama , ed. v. Klaus Kropfinger , Stuttgart 1984.

swell

  • Richard Wagner: Opera and Drama . Leipzig: Weber 1852 (also Stuttgart: Reclam 1984, ISBN 3-15-008207-2 )
  • Richard Wagner: Complete Writings and Seals , Leipzig 1911
  • Sven Friedrich: Richard Wagner, Works, Writings and Letters , Digital Library, Berlin 2004.