Infinite melody
With the expression infinite melody , the composer Richard Wagner described the melody in his stage works, which defies a periodic structure. Beyond Wagner, the term has become a symbol for the dissolution of musical forms since the end of the 19th century.
Wagner first used the term in 1860 in his work “ Zukunftsmusik ” to characterize his own method of composition. First of all he claims there “that the only form of music is melody”. When a musician says the unspeakable, is "the unmistakable form of his loudly sounding silence [...] the infinite melody". In doing so, he made them a kind of inner monologue or stream of consciousness .
Wagner presented the infinite melody as a historically necessary liberation from the dance forms of Italian opera . Probably due to numerous defamations in the period that followed (“infinite lack of melody”), he later only rarely used the term.
Individual evidence
- ^ Richard Wagner, Zukunftsmusik , in: Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen , Leipzig: Siegel 4/1907, Vol. 7, p. 125.
- ^ Richard Wagner, Zukunftsmusik , in: Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen , Leipzig: Siegel 4/1907, Vol. 7, p. 130.
- ↑ For example George Morin 1869 in his criticism of Tristan and Isolde (opera) in: Germania: political weekly for German interests, 2: 1869, p. 208.
Web links
- Fritz Reckow: Infinite melody. (PDF; 18 kB) State Institute for Music Research, 1971, archived from the original on February 19, 2014 ; accessed on February 17, 2020 (original website no longer available).