Richard Wagner: The Life Of A Tortured Musician

Richard Wagner was a composer who defined the era, influencing many great musical movements. Wagner’s influence on the way people composed music was evident in melodies and harmonies, and also in orchestration.

His thoughts, theory, and lifestyle attracted admirers and enemies. He was a controversial figure. In terms of music, Wagner’s operas often had a clear dilution of clefs that blurred the line between singing and singing.

Wagner’s music transports us to a universe filled with heroism. His compositions take over our ears and they prompt us to dive into the story that unfolds on stage.

The early life of Richard Wagner

Wagner was born on May 22, 1813, in Leipzig, Germany, to a modest family. His mother Rosima Patz was the baker’s daughter, and his father Karl Friedrich Wagner was a police clerk. When Wagner was still a child, his father died during the typhus epidemic.

Shortly afterwards, his mother married Ludwig Geyer, and he became Wagner’s stepfather. Geyer was an actor, singer, and painter, and he was one of the earliest artistic influences in Wagner’s life. Because Geyer worked in theater, Wagner’s family had to move to Dresden.

Wagner began attending the school of Vizehofkantor Carl Friedrich Schmidt in Dresden in 1817. In 1822 he began attending the Kreuzschule school in Dresden. He studied there until he was 14 years old, and there he began to receive piano education.

Richard Wagner used the name Richard Geyer until he was 15 years old. He changed his surname to his father’s surname when he began attending Nicolaischule’s school in Leipzig, on 21 January 1828.

The inconsolability of youth

The sheer number and variety of Wagnerian compositions shows that he composed a wide range of different sub-styles, including classical music.

In 1833, when he was 20 years old, he began his professional career when he accepted a job as a director of the Würzburg Choir. During this early stage, all of his projects were small in budget and had only a rural audience. As director of the orchestra, he completed his first opera: Die feen  (Fairies). Unfortunately, this opera was performed only five years after his death.

Three years later, Wagner unhappily married Minna Planer, and she wrote numerous operas. It was at that time that he began to develop revolutionary musical ideas. Some even say that Wagner’s theories contributed to the rise of Hitler and Nazism to some degree, and some of his compositions are still banned in Israel.

This was a particularly gloomy time for Wagner. Her marriage to Planer didn’t help, and she also had financial problems. In addition to this, he began to become addicted to gambling and alcohol, and this made it even more difficult to solve financial problems.

In 1839, Wagner’s massive debts forced him to flee the country and move to Paris. He returned to Germany a few years later, in 1842, but his time in Paris failed completely. He failed to complete any of his works there. Wagner pushed himself and his works, and looked at the works of other composers, but he received no publicity.

Richard Wagner as a writer

Wagner was not merely a great composer; he also experimented with other art forms such as writing. Between 1840 and 1842 he published his most important essays.

These essays dealt with historical and theoretical topics which he studied during his lifetime. Wagner was also a lucrative journalist and published numerous reviews of Parisian musical events in German newspapers. He also wrote some “documentary” works.

It is worth noting that there are ambiguities in certain areas of his life. This is due in part to the inconsistencies in his autobiography, Mein Leben in.

This autobiography covers the period from his birth to the age of 51. It is a truly subjective book, and his ego is perfectly featured in it. This makes it difficult to make confident statements about what his life really was like. He wrote it definitively in 1865 after his benefactor, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, asked him to write it.

Return home

After the performance of his opera  Meyerbeer , Wagner became the most famous composer in Germany. Just a few days after this performance, Francesco Morlacchi, the Royal Captain, died. Wagner took his position on February 2, 1843. This position gave him a good political position and made him an expert at mixing creativity and governance.

Wagner’s artistic interests quickly mingled with his political activism. He thought that theater could act as a mirror to a reactionary society. So by changing the theater, he might be able to change society. It was around this time that Wagner became interested in subversive politics.

Wagner began to be in line with German nationalism. This way of thinking was clear in the mythological characters he wrote, and also in the plots of his operas. One of his general themes at the time was the German colonies.

Political change and Louis II as a benefactor

The uncertain political climate led to a revolution in Dresden in 1849. This was the end of Wagner’s career as a conductor of the Royal Orchestra. Shortly after the revolution, Wagner was issued an arrest warrant and fled to Switzerland. He lived in Switzerland as a refugee for 11 years.

During this time, Wagner found himself in a difficult position. It was not possible for him to operate in the German musical world, and his income was as poor as his ability to perform his works.

In 1864, Wagner lived in Mariafeld, near Zurich, escaping from the many people he owed. King Louis II, a great admirer of Wagner’s work, offered Wagner his hospitality and financial help. With the help of his new benefactor, he wrote Huldigungsmarch. 

In 1865 he presented his classic work, Tristan und Isolden  in Munich. A year later, Minna died in Dresden and Wagner settled in Geneva. Thanks to the financial support of Louis II, Wagner was able to work on his opera without thinking about the costs of sinking into it.

Bayreuth

Years later, Wagner created the Wagner Society, a theater that hosted festivals of the same name and that still exists. He laid the first foundations for Bayreuth’s Wagner celebration on his 59th birthday. He also organized numerous concerts all over Germany to raise money and complete the building in 1874, thanks once again to the support of Louis II.

This composer also built a villa, which he called the Wahnfried of Bayreuth. Unfortunately, just a few years after its completion, the theater had already lost a lot of money. Wagner performed at numerous concerts to raise funds again and compensate for losses. He would no longer be alive for long, for at that time he began to suffer from heart disease.

Death and inheritance

Richard Wagner suffered numerous heart attacks between 1881 and 1882. This famous composer died in Venice on February 13, 1883.  His body was buried in the garden of his villa, Wahnfried.

Wagner’s tetralogy, D er Ring des Nibelungen,  is undoubtedly a masterpiece. It consists of four operas:  Reininkulta, Valkyyria, Siegfried and The Destruction of the Gods. This tetralogy,  along with the master singers of Tristan und Isolde, Nuremberg, along with Lohengrin, Tannhäuser,  and the  Flying Dutchman , are part of the so-called Bayreuth canon.

This ensemble was not fully performed until 1876. Since then, the entire canon of operas has been performed each year at the festivals still held in Bayreuth, Germany.

Wagner’s ideas had numerous supporters, as well as slanderers. The legacy he left behind alongside the Wagner Festival theater, which is a more complex theater than any before, was made possible by the passionate support of Louis II. This theater today exists only to present his work, as a constant reminder of his intelligence and timelessness.